Category: Research

What we think of as a strawberry is botanically not a berry or even a fruit, but rather multiple fruits (achenes that contain the seeds) on the outside of a swollen receptacle. This technicality aside, strawberries are both economically important and a useful system in which to study seed-fruit communication.…

Light is life, especially for plants. It fuels photosynthesis and, when perceived by photoreceptors, directs important developmental programs, including photomorphogenesis and shade avoidance. Red and blue light wavelengths activate phytochrome (phy) and cryptochrome (cry) photoreceptors, respectively,…

Protein-protein interactions mediate fundamental biological processes. Yeast two-hybrid assays can be used to detect protein-protein interactions in a fast and large-scale manner. However, in traditional yeast-two hybrid assays, the prey and bait proteins must be located in the nucleus to activate reporter…

Yuki Yoshida, first author of  The Arabidopsis phyB-9 mutant has a second-site mutation in the VENOSA4 gene that alters chloroplast size, photosynthetic traits, and leaf growth Current Position: Postdoctoral researcher in Graduate School of Science at The University of Tokyo. Education: PhD and…

Aigerim Soltabayeva, first author of Early senescence in the older leaves of low nitrate grown Atxdh1 mutant uncovers a role for purine catabolism in N supply Current Position: Postdoctoral Researcher at the Biology Department in the School of Science and Technology at Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan Education:…

Auxin has been studied since Charles Darwin observed the phototropic response. More recently, chemical genetic approaches using auxin agonists and antagonists have been applied to studies of auxin. Torii et al. review how synthetic chemistry and chemical genetics have provided insights into and new tools…

How chloroplasts remain viable inside of herbivorous sea slugs is a long-standing curiosity. Unlike corals, which host intact photosynthetic algae, sea slugs retain naked chloroplasts (which are then called kleptoplasts – stolen plastids), some of which remain viable for seveal weeks. Christa et al.…

Numerous prokaryotic and eukaryotic genes have been identified as having homology to viral sequences. This phenomenon is the result of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) between viral pathogens and host cells. Chu and collaborators performed a proteome-wide analysis for the identification of viral domains…