David Eyland, first author of "The impact of slow stomatal kinetics on photosynthesis and water use efficiency under fluctuating light" Current Position: PhD candidate at KU Leuven Education: Master in Bioscience Engineering at KU Leuven Non-scientific Interests: Football & hiking Brief…

Corredor-Moreno et al. identify a branched-chain amino acid aminotransferase that is critical for progression of economically damaging diseases of wheat. Pilar Corredor-Moreno and Diane G.O. Saunders John Innes Centre Background: Wheat yellow and stem rust are major diseases of wheat worldwide.…

The root system has three key functions: support/anchoring, uptake of water, and uptake of nutrients. Many questions remain about how roots integrate all of these functions into the architecture of a single system. Here, Bardhan et al. explore whether modifying the nutrient environment (hence root’s…

Master transcription factors (TFs) can activate specific genetic programs to reprogram cellular fate in the context of open chromatin. A special class of these proteins known as pioneer TFs are defined by their ability to trigger cell fate reprogramming by binding their cognate cis motifs in a nucleosome…

Plants form leaves with highly reproducible sizes and shapes by employing a conserved set of developmental regulators. During early leaf growth, a zone of high cell proliferation is formed towards the proximal end of the lamina.  Proliferating cells progressively exit this zone and enter the distal…

It’s like the plot of every spy movie you’ve ever seen. If you could infiltrate your opponent’s headquarters what would you target to disable your enemy? This is the question addressed in new work by Petre et al. More than ten years ago, a family of small proteins was identified, the RXLR proteins…

Two very exciting papers have come out this week in Nature that address a long-standing question about the relative contributions of two different plant immunity pathways. PTI (pathogen-triggered immunity) recognizes conserved pathogen signatures at the plant cell surface; a model system for PTI is the…

Review: Can smart nutrient applications optimize the plant's hidden half to improve drought resistance? The root system has three key functions: support/anchoring, uptake of water, and uptake of nutrients. Many questions remain about how roots integrate all of these functions into the architecture…