The red algae (Rhodophyta), encompassing over 8,000 species, are the richest source of marine secondary metabolites. Among red algae, many genera produce terpenes, which constitute the largest class of secondary metabolites. Despite the rich diversity of terpenes in red algae, little is known about how…

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) fruits undergo pronounced softening during ripening. Softening is important for flavor development and overall palatability, but also impacts fruit storage, transportability, and shelf life. Shelf life is a particularly important quality trait of tomato fruits affected by…

To optimize their fitness in the field, plants need to respond rapidly, specifically and dynamically to an ever-changing and often hostile environment. By integrating external environmental cues with endogenous developmental programs, phytohormones play a critical role in the cross-talk between signal…

Clay Wright, first author of Plant Synthetic Biology: Quantifying the Known Unknowns and Discovering the Unknown Unknowns Current Position: Assistant Professor, Biological Systems Engineering, Translational Plant Science Program, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg VA USA. Education: Postdoctoral Fellow,…

In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare wrote, “that which we call a rose, by any other word would smell as sweet,” but the truth is, most roses today don’t smell as sweet as the ones Shakespeare described; selection for prolonged cut flower life has largely been at the expense of fragrance. Roccia seek…

Future research success demands that data are reliable, accessible and shareable. This means that as types and magnitudes of data change, best practices for how data are collected and stored must be regularly updated. Following a focused workshop, the International Arabidopsis Informatics Consortium…

This week’s edition is guest edited by Arif Ashraf, a PhD student at Iwate University, Japan and Graduate Student Ambassador of ASPB (NOTE: Apply by January 15th to be an ASPB ambassador). His research interest is understanding the hormonal interplay in primary root development of Arabidopsis thaliana.…

Twenty years ago, a genetic screen of Lotus japonicas identified NIN (NODULE INCEPTION), a transcription factor required for both early (infection thread) and late (nodule primordium development) stages of nodule formation. In daphne (a weak allele of NIN), infection threads form but not nodule primordia,…