Brassinosteroids are plant hormones that play important roles in cell proliferation and expansion, but it is still unclear exactly what those roles are. Vukasinovic and colleagues show, in Arabidopsis thaliana root cells, that instrinsic brassinosteroid gradients signal anticlinal division. Single-cell…

In flowering plants, reproduction involves the alternation of two generations: the diploid sporophyte and the haploid gametophyte. Traditionally, the male gametophyte was thought to develop autonomously with minimal regulation by the sporophyte. However, recent research by Sivakumar, Pandey, and Ramesha…

FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) and TERMINAL FLOWER1 (TFL1), two members of the phosphatidylethanolamine-binding protein (PEBP) family, are well-known regulators of flowering time and inflorescence architecture in Arabidopsis thaliana. However, recent work by Bigas et al. uncovers their additional roles in regulating…

Review: Celebrating 150 years of Arabidopsis genetics The first known report of an Arabidopsis thaliana mutant appeared approximately 150 years ago (1873). In the intervening years, Arabidopsis has become an essential model for plant genetic research, driving groundbreaking discoveries across multiple…

Resolving phytohormone response zones by fluorescent reporters Phytohormones such salicylic acid (SA), ethylene (ET), and jasmonic acid (JA) are known to regulate plant immunity, but their spatial dynamics has remained unclear. Using a set of fluorescent reporters in Arabidopsis, Calabria et al.…

Phytohormones such salicylic acid (SA), ethylene (ET), and jasmonic acid (JA) are known to regulate plant immunity, but their spatial dynamics has remained unclear. Using a set of fluorescent reporters in Arabidopsis, Calabria et al. resolved the hormonal responses upon Fusarium oxysporum infection at…

This exciting paper by Chen, Qi, Zou et al. adds a new twist to the story of auxin. Until this work, the current model for how auxin mediates transcriptional changes has been that auxin (IAA) binds to TIR1, a ubiquitin ligase, when interacts with and causes the degradation of Aux/IAA repressor proteins,…

A pan-genome has been assembled for the Solanum genus, which contains many diverse and economically important crops including potato, tomato, and African eggplant. Genomes were assembled for 22 species, and genes were predicted based on previous reference genomes and from RNA sequences across multiple…