Carpels, the female reproductive structures in angiosperms, are the most complex organs in plants. Most of the current knowledge about the molecular mechanism underlying carpel development derives from Arabidopsis. In a new review, Becker summarizes recent studies about the reconstruction of ancestral…

Since the publication of the Marchantia polymorpha genome in 2017, a big update was necessary. In the past week, two groups published on improving Marchantia chromosome assembly following different experimental approaches. Diop et al. made a high-density linkage map using genetic markers obtained by…

Potassium is one of the major nutrients for plant growth and development. Plants have a well-studied potassium uptake system mediated by transporters and ion channels. Unfortunately, due to the chemical similarity of potassium and cesium, which is toxic for plant growth, cesium is able to to get into…

Plants have evolved with rooting cells to anchor them to the land and uptake nutrients efficiently. Growth of root hairs in seed plants or rhizoids in early diverging plants both rely on tip growth, which requires a coordination of wall loosening and deposition of wall materials with cell expansion in…

How exactly does the plant defense system target pathogens? Nobori et al. have analyzed interactions inside the plant between the foliar bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae and Arabidopsis thaliana at transcriptomic and proteomic levels by using RNAseq and liquid chromatography mass spectrometry…

This study, from scientists at Corteva Agriscience, demonstrates a yield boost in transgenic maize overexpressing a gene encoding a transcription factor. Expression of zmm28, a maize MADS-box transcription factor gene, is elevated through fusion to a maize GOS2 promoter, which provides moderate, constitutive…

We all know the importance of staying upright, especially for our grass crops. Here, Zhang et al. identified a gene underlying a large-effect quantitative trait locus that confers stiff stalks, so prevents lodging. They show that the stiff-stock allele carries a large transposon that strongly represses…

Plant roots communicate with microbes in a sophisticated manner through chemical communication within the rhizosphere, thereby leading to biofilm formation of beneficial microbes and resulting in priming of defence, or induced resistance in the plant host to a wide range of pathogens (induced systemic…