Recent Posts

Stepwise cell fate establishment in the rice stem

Tsuda et al. investigate the temporal order of cell fate establishment during stem development in rice. https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koad241 By Katsutoshi Tsuda Background: The stem, which consists of nodes and internodes, is an axis of the shoot that physically supports lateral organs such…

A MATE transporter regulates grain size in rice

Zhou et al. discover a molecular mechanism of rice grain size regulation. https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koad239 By Chunlei Zhou from Nanjing Agricultural University Background: Grain size is a key factor for determining grain yield. Many genes or quantitative trait loci (QTLs) that regulate…

Review: Stem cells for crop improvement

Plants, like animals, have small populations of stem cells capable of differentiating into other tissues, but in plants these stem cell populations are even more long-lived and versatile. Stem cells in plants include the meristems (shoot and root apical meristems, inflorescence and axillary meristems)…