One of the things I like most about synthetic biology is the “why not” attitude. This article by Bernhardsgrütter et al. is intriguing because rather than taking the standard “let’s fix Rubisco approach,” the authors started with a non-CO2 fixing enzyme and engineered it towards having carboxylase…

Opium poppies produce opiates including morphine and thebaine. Derivatives of these compounds can also have diverse beneficial properties. One of these, naloxone, is a competitive opioid receptor antagonist that can be administered to counteract the effects of opioid overdose. Because of the rise in…

Root hairs vastly increase the surface area of the root in contact with the soil substrate, and are crucial for efficient water and nutrient uptake. They are also an excellent system for studies of polar growth or tip growth in cells, a process that involves the cytoskeleton, defined membrane domains,…

Tea quality depends on the product's taste and aroma, which are provided by phenolic and volatile compounds respectively.  Here, Shi et al. analyzed changes of volatile and amino acid (AA) profiles in fresh tea leaves (Camellia sinensis L.) and during the processing of three tea products (green, oolong…

Climate change is expected to cause numerous negative impacts on plant populations. An under considered area that will be affected are the communities of soil organisms that rely on a delicate balance of environmental conditions, particularly in grasslands that receive moderate precipitation (mesic grasslands).…

Auxin activity is maintained through regulated biosynthesis, metabolism and transport. In this paper Jenness et al. characterized the physiological significance of a known IAA transporter, ABCB21 (ATP BINDING CASSETTE TRANSPORTER subfamily B member 21) in Arabidopsis. ABCB21 transports shoot derived…

Systemic acquired resistance (SAR) is a robust long-distance immune response mediated by a diverse contingent of candidate phloem-mobile signals that prime distal uninfected tissues for enhanced resistance to future infections. The lysine-derived catabolite pipecolic acid (Pip) has emerged as a key mediator…

Review: A series of fortunate events: Introducing Chlamydomonas as a reference organism Clamydomonas reinhardtii is the most thoroughly characterized unicellular alga. Like yeast, it is a single-celled eukaryotic organism that is easy to culture, and it lives predominantly in its haploid form but…