Recent Posts

OsSHI1 shapes plant architecture in rice

Duan et al. explore the mechanism underlying plant architecture establishment in rice.  Plant Cell https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.19.00023 By Erchao Duan, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China. Background: Rice is a major crop consumed by more than half of the world’s population. The…

Loss-of-Function, a Strategy for Adaptation in Arabidopsis

When thinking about adaptive processes, the concept of genetic innovation comes to mind. At the genomic scale, a lot of attention has been given to gene introgression, duplication, and novel functionalization to uncover the bases of adaptation. However, as the majority of genes are non-essential, both…
Plant Direct - Open Access

The Plant Direct Associate Reviewer Board

By Ivan Baxter At Plant Direct, we take our role as a society journal seriously. So seriously, in fact, that we belong to two societies: the American Society of Plant Biologists and the Society for Experimental Biology. Part of our commitment is to publish the work of our community members without…
Plant Direct - Open Access

The scope of Plant Direct

By Ivan Baxter Plant Direct is now fully up and running and accepting manuscripts and publishing papers. We are very excited to see the great science that has been submitted. But many have asked me what our statement “We seek to be the sound science plant journal for the community of ASPB…
Plant Direct - Open Access

Plant Direct: ORCID and Preprint Policies

ORCID policy To represent our support of a global identifier and standardization in academic publishing, we require that all authors include a valid ORCID ID and email address during the submission process. Peer review of manuscripts will not commence until this information has been provided for all…

How Does Light Cause Arabidopsis Cotyledons to Open?

Dong et al. investigate cotyledon-specific light-regulated gene expression in Arabidopsis. The Plant Cell (2019). https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.18.00803  By J. Dong, N. Sun, J. Yang, Z. Deng, J. Lan, G. Qin, H. He, X. W. Deng, V. F. Irish, H. Chen, and N. Wei Background: When germinating in darkness…

Recognizing The Plant Cell first authors: Ken Jean-Baptiste

Ken Jean-Baptiste, first author of Dynamics of gene expression in single root cells of A. thaliana Current Position: Ph.D. Candidate, Queitsch Lab, Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States Education: A.B. in Molecular Biology with the Applications…

To grow, or not to grow, that is the question

Xin et al., identify a mechanistic model that governs cucumber fruit elongation through fine-tuning of ethylene homeostasis. Plant Cell https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.18.00957 By Xueyong Yang and Tongxu Xin Background: Plant organ growth and development are determined by the subtle balance between…

Recognizing Plant Physiology first authors: Lingfeng Xia

Lingfeng Xia, first author of Unusual roles of secretory SNARE SYP132 in plasma membrane H+-ATPase traffic and vegetative plant growth Current Position: PhD student, Plant Science Group, Institute of Molecular, Cell and Systems Biology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK Education: 2014.9-2017.6…