Iron is an essential micronutrient for plants but it is often not bioavailable in the soil. Thus, plants have evolved difference processes for iron sensing and iron uptake. OLIGOPEPTIDE TRANSPORTER 3 (OPT3) is an important iron transporter and is a component of the systemic network that mediates iron…

Commentary. 10KP: A phylodiverse genome sequencing plan Nobody doubts the great insights we have gained about plant diversity and evolution from genome sequencing, but the patchy nature of available genomes within the plant phylogeny remains a problem. Cheng et al. describe the 10KP (10,000 Plants)…

The cross-talk between cytokinin and auxin has been well established from different developmental perspective. In this article, Zhang et al. have explored the role of cytokinin and auxin cross-talk in floral meristem (FM) determinacy. The authors demonstrated that auxin induces the expression of ARF3…

Plant growth is regulated seasonally, but our knowledge is limited about how their growth is inhibited or re-initiated seasonally. Looking at hybrid aspen, in this article, Tylewicz et al. explored how seasonal cycles of growth and dormancy help perennial plants adapt during winter. In the long days…

Passage cells are a subset of interspersed root endodermal cells that are unsuberized, which is thought to aid in transport because suberin inhibits transcellular transport. In Arabidopsis, suberization follows a stereotypic pattern which responds to many stress conditions, partly mediated by abscisic…

LRR-RKs (Leucine-Rich Repeat Receptor Kinases) are membrane-spanning receptor molecules that recognize a diverse array of signaling ligands. SERKs (SOMATIC EMBRYOGENESIS RECEPTOR KINASEs) are co-receptors that are required for signal processing. Like LRR-RKs, SERKs span the membrane, with an intracellular…

Calcium plays a major role in regulating pollen tube (PT) growth. Calcium levels are oscillatory in nature at the PT tip, along with anion efflux.  Calcium has been shown to regulate anion channels in guard cells through calcium protein kinase (CPK) activation. Gutermuth et al. provide evidence for…

Plants need some but not too much iron, so the regulation of iron transporters is quite tight. IRT1 is a broad-spectrum metal transporter that is crucial for iron uptake (mutants can only be rescued by massive amounts of iron). IRT1 synthesis is transcriptionally upregulated by iron limitation, and although…