Recent Posts

Chloroplast signaling gates thermotolerance in Arabidopsis (Cell Reports)

Plants are able to sense and respond to temperature changes in their environment.  However, the mechanism by which high temperature is sensed and then relayed to affect the expression of heat shock transcription factors (HSFs) is unclear.  Dickinson et al. demonstrated that Arabidopsis plants show…

Microtubule reassembly mediated by ethylene in response to salt stress (Plant Physiol.)

It has been shown previously that cortical microtubule reorganization contributes to adaptation to salt stress; however, the upstream factors that signal this response are not know. Ethylene has been shown to regulate microtubule stability and organization in roots and etiolated hypocotyls. Ethylene…

Biological relevance of VOCs emitted during the pathogenic interactions (Mol. Plant Pathol.)

It is well known that upon pathogenic infections, plants defend themselves by emission of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) as one of the defence strategies. This work by Cellini et al. aims to understand the biological relevance of these organic volatiles in the fire blight disease of apple caused by…

FERONIA rmaintains cell-wall integrity during salt stress through Ca2+ signaling (Curr. Biol.)

Growing plant cells need to loosen up their cell walls while maintaining their integrity. This process gets trickier when plants are exposed to salt stress. Feng et al. describe the important role of the plasma membrane-localized receptor-like kinase FERONIA in restoring growth and cell wall integrity…

REVIEW In vitro propagation of bamboo species (Plant Cell Tissu Organ Cult) ($)

Bamboos are economically important plants, with versatile applications including use in construction, paper, textiles and food production and bioenergy uses among others. Traditional methods of plant propagation are revealed to be challenging in this plant. First, bamboo propagation through seeds could…

Transcriptomic analysis of wound xylem formation in Pinus canariensis (BMC Plant Biol.)

Woody plants, given their usually long life span, typically must face during their life several injuries that could take as long as several years to heal.  In their work, Chano et al. use microarray analysis and RT-PCR to analyze the transcriptome changes that occurs during wood formation after a…

What We're Reading: February 23rd

Guest Editor: Dr. Isabel Mendoza Isabel is a plant biologist from Spain that got her PhD on (Plant) Biotechnology in 2013 with a study about secondary metabolism in spike lavender.  Since then she has changed her career path a bit into R&D and innovation management and science communication.…

What We're Reading: February 16th

Guest Editor: Dr. Amey Redkar Amey is a postdoc at The Sainsbury Laboratory, Norwich, UK and has been a Plantae Fellow since September 2017. He is working to understand the interaction of plants and pathogens during disease development. His current research which is funded by EMBO Long Term Fellowship…

Review. Rise of a cereal killer:  The biology of Magnaporthe oryzae biotrophic growth

The fungal pathogen Magnaporthe oryzae causes one of the most destructive diseases of rice, destroying around 10-30% of rice production world-wide. The pathogen undergoes different developmental changes and produce specialized infectious structures in order to rapidly proliferate within the host cells.…