Recent Posts

Plant sex regions can “jump” in strawberry (PLOS Biol.)

Sex chromosome restructure has happened frequently during the evolution of eukaryotes, often resulting in highly differentiated sex chromosomes. However, little is known about this process in plants. The wild North American octoploid strawberries (Fragaria) have separate sexes with homomorphic, female…

Agrobacterium tumefaciens enhances biosynthesis of two distinct auxins in crown galls ($) (Plant Cell Physiol.)

Kiyoshi et al. investigated auxin biosynthesis during the formation of crown galls by Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Agrobacterium introduces into the plant T-DNA containing two auxin biosynthesis genes iaaM (TRYPTOPHAN-2-MONOOXYGENASE) and iaaH (INDOLE-3-ACETAMIDE HYDROLASE). The authors used LC-MS/MS to…

A rationally designed JAZ subtype-selective agonist of jasmonate perception (Nature Comms.)

Many plant hormones have pleiotropic effects, switching on and off multiple, seemingly unrelated processes. As an example, jasmonates both turn on herbivore defense responses and suppress growth. Takaoka et al. have elegantly separated these, by developing a jasmonate mimic that only activates defences.…

CLASP sustains cell proliferation through a brassinosteroid signaling negative feedback loop ($) (Curr. Biol.)

Brassinostreroid (BR) regulates the development of the root apical meristem. High levels of BR have inhibitory effects on cell production rates in the meristem and low levels show the opposite effect. Ruan, Halat et al. showed that BR regulates microtubule-associated CLASP (CLIP-Associated Protein) expression…

Phosphocode-dependent functional dichotomy of a common co-receptor in plant signalling (Nature)

It’s often surprising and a bit confusing when a protein that has been implicated in one process reveals itself to be involved in a totally different process as well. BAK1 (also known as SERK3) was first identified as a co-receptor for brassinosteroids (BRs), forming ligand-induced heterodimers with…

What We're Reading: September 14th

Special issue: Orchestrating the proteome with post-translational modifications I guess we're well past the stage of thinking "one gene - one protein", but even a single polypeptide isn't really one protein, due to the huge number of different types of post-translational modification (PTM) it can…

Recognizing Plant Physiology first authors: Lijuan Song

Lijuan Song, first author of The genomes uncoupled mutants are more sensitive to norflurazon than wild type Current position: PhD student, Key Laboratory of Horticultural Plant Biology, Ministry of Education, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China Education: BS (2016) from JiangHan University,…

Don’t Go Grocery Shopping When Hungry! Systemic Signaling in Zinc Homeostasis

Going grocery-shopping on an empty stomach is a bad idea. You’re bound to make poor decisions, not based on nutritional content of the food but based on temporary cravings that will leave you asking for more later. Plants face this nutritional puzzle every day, since they eat where they shop, and shop…

Handling the Heat - Methylome Variation Underlying Heat Tolerance in Cotton

Plants must accommodate many stresses in order to grow and reproduce normally. Heat stress in particular can negatively affect anther development in flowering plants, leading to male-sterile flowers that produce indehiscent anthers and sterile pollen, and consequently are not capable of sexual reproduction.…