Category: Research

Eukaryotes use two major systems for getting rid of unwanted proteins: the ubiquitin proteasome system and autophagy. The proteasome degrades ubiquitinated proteins. Autophagosomal vesicles encapsulate cellular waste and either deliver it to the vacuole or fuse with a lysosome. Animal cells use autophagy…

By C. Robin Buell Unlike molecular biology techniques that are routinely used in individual investigator labs, the high cost of infrastructure historically has resulted in genome sequencing being performed at genome centers in which quality control and quality assessments are a mainstay, and it is…

For most plants, becoming submerged under water can be lethal due to a restriction in gas exchange. One strategy for submergence tolerance is called an escape strategy, such as that employed by deepwater rice; the plant elongates rapidly to raise its leaves above the water level. Minami et al. used transcriptomics…

Legumains are proteins identified first from legumes that have subsequently been identified in other organisms. They are also described as asparaginyl endopeptidases (AEPs) and vacuolar cysteine proteases or vacuolar processing enzymes. Enzymatically, legumains can express peptidase and peptide ligase…

Small cyclic peptides are produced in many organisms; some are produced by ribosomes and others not. Fisher et al. explore a class of small cyclic peptides known as orbitides, which have been identified in plants of Asteroideae subfamily of the plant family Asteraceae. The fact that these are abundant…

In proliferating tissues, plant cells start small and then expand to up to 100 times their original size. Sapala, Runions and collaborators studied the relationship between mechanical stress and shape to see if mechanical stress could affect the shape of epidermal cells. Simulations were run to see the…

Polyploidy can result either through genome doubling followed by intraspecific crosses, or when two genomes from independent species hybridize, leading to autopolyploidy, or allopolyploidy, respectively. Polyploidy is an important evolutionary tool; the resultant redundancy from the duplication of genes…

The question of the relative risks and benefits of genetically engineered (GE) maize is still in the middle of a heated debate, despite the widespread cultivation of GE crops (12% of the global crop-land) and long standing commercialization (since 1996).  Pellegrino et al. report a meta-analysis of…