The volume of water required for a given crop yield is largely influenced by the plant's Water Use Efficiency (WUE). Considering that the majority of the water taken up by plants is lost through transpiration, WUE can be improved by modulating stomatal opening. Besides light and temperature, stomatal…

Much remains to be learned about the sensing and signaling mechanisms controlling growth in response to drought. To dissect how plants control drought via autophagy, Bao et al. found a plant-specific protein, COST1 (CONSTITUTIVELY STRESSED 1) containing a DUF641 (domain of unknown function 641) domain,…

In flowering plants, fertilization occurs when a pollen tube, growing down the transmitting tissue, arrives at the ovule, ruptures, and releases its content of sperm cells. The pollen tube is guided towards the ovule by LUREs, small cysteine-rich secreted peptides. Timely rupturing and sperm release…

Seedling establishment is seldom addressed in trait-based ecology. Advocating for the importance of this stage of a plants' life, Larson et al. assessed how functional traits varied in newly emerged seedlings and how this was related to their phylogeny and survival under drought. The authors germinated…

Editorial: Redeploying plant defences With COVID19 ravaging across the globe, the medicinal value of plants and related research fields e.g., phytochemistry, ethnobotany, etc., is presently in focus. The drug development chain, though extremely promising, is not an immediate solution as it is a long,…

Galileo Estopare Araguirang, first author of The 4 Arabidopsis Choline/Ethanolamine Kinase Isozymes Play Distinct Roles in Metabolism and Development Current Position: PhD Candidate (Biochemistry) in Prof. Philip Wigge’s Lab under the prestigious International Max Planck Research School- Primary Metabolism…

Qin et al. show that PI(4,5)P2 functions as a susceptibility factor for plant disease. Plant Cell https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.19.00970 By Li Qin and Yangdou Wei. Department of Biology, University of Saskatchewan, Canada Background: Biotrophic plant pathogens such as powdery mildews and rusts require…

Laurent Mombaerts, co-first author of Differential effects of day-night cues and the circadian clock on the barley transcriptome Current Position: 2019 – now Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Systems Control group, Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine, University of Luxembourg Education: 2019…