Among the stresses that sessile plants face, wounding is peculiar as it can be caused by both biotic and abiotic sources. While studies of wounding in animal systems have largely focused on the repair mechanisms, less is known about wound healing in plants. In an attempt to throw light on this, Hoermayer…

Responses to a changing environment require an interplay between primary and secondary messengers. Hormones like abscisic acid (ABA), auxin etc. act as a primary messengers, whereas molecules like Ca2+, reactive oxygen species (ROS), other cations and anions act as a secondary messenger. In this paper,…

Abscisic acid (ABA) is a phytohormone involved in imparting tolerance to a variety of stress conditions. Importantly, ABA is involved in stomatal closure, mediated by the sucrose non-fermenting1-related protein kinase 2 (SnRK2) family of proteins. To report SnRK2 activity in vivo, Zhang and co-workers…

Crop production is greatly influenced by the duration of the last stage of plant life cycle, senescence, through degradation of resources in leaves and remobilization of nutrients to developing seeds. Indeed, higher grain yield of important cereals such as maize and sorghum can be achieved by using stay-green…

  Developing drought tolerant plants is an important challenge in agriculture. Drought responses and plant growth are regulated by several signaling pathways, one of which is activated by brassinosteroids (BRs), a group of plant steroid hormones. In order to better understand the crosstalk…

Symbiotic nitrogen fixation is a mutualistic relationship between plants and microbes in which plants supply fixed carbon to bacteria in exchange for nitrogen. During this process, the microbes use nitrogenase enzyme to convert atmospheric nitrogen into a plant-usable form, but the metabolic interaction…

Seed-seed interactions can control the germination of grassland species. The result of this interaction (i.e., germination being inhibited or promoted) presumably depends on the dominance and taxonomic relatedness of interacting species. However, the relative importance of these factors is poorly explored.…

Aphids are an important insect pest that can cause significant yield loss to crops, particularly through feeding damage and as vector for devasting plant pathogens. How aphids and other sap-feeding insects use their stylet to penetrate the plant vascular tissues is well studied but the factors involved…