Potato productivity is highly vulnerable to drought and salinity, yet the signaling mechanisms underlying stress adaptation remain incompletely understood. A recent study by Zhu et al. used a genome-wide analysis of the mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase kinase (MAPKKK) family in potato and identified…

We are used to thinking of plants as slow-moving organisms, so the few exceptions that exist are not only fascinating curiosities but also scientific mysteries waiting to be resolved. The Venus flytrap is one of the most studied fast-moving plants. Until now, the rapid closure of its trap was thought…

Special Issue of Current Biology on plant evolution Current Biology has an excellent special issue on plant evolution full of fascinating articles. As an example, a Primer by Zhuo Feng looks at how plants were catastrophically impacted by the end-Permian mass extinction event approximately 250 million…

Our food crops are threatened by ever-increasing environmental challenges as a consequence of climate change. It’s critical that we develop strategies to monitor and mitigate these stresses, but it’s also a huge undertaking. A new focus issue in Physiologia Plantarum provides a set of articles that…

There are numerous ways that AI can support research productivity through its ability to evaluate large datasets. Plant Communications has assembled a collection of articles that describe some of these new tools and approaches. As an example, Jang et al. describe the use of digital twins as tools to…

Compared to their aquatic relatives, early land plants faced many challenges, such as a lack of buoyancy, harmful UV light, the challenge of nutrient uptake, and the need to avoid desiccation. In a fascinating review (part of the Plant Physiology focus collection on early land plant evolution), Domozych…

Plants continuously monitor their environment through sophisticated defense systems that recognize microbe-associated molecular patterns and activate immune responses. Among the diverse signaling molecules involved, peptides have emerged as an important molecular language that coordinates communication…

Genome editing has rapidly transformed biology, and Cas9 remains the most widely used tool for making targeted changes in DNA. Recently, a new AI-designed editor called OpenCRISPR-1 (OC1) which differs from prototypical SpCas by more than 400 amino acids has shown promise in human cells. Das and colleagues…