Jian Liu, Xuecui Wang, Zeyuan Guan, Junjie Yan and colleagues reveal how the glucan phosphatase LSF1 acts as a scaffold to bring together the necessary enzymes for starch degradation. https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koad259 Background: Starch is a glucan-polymer that accumulates in chloroplasts…

Shen et al. explore how female reproductive development is maintained in at high ambient temperatures in barley and rice, and whether members of the SEPALLATA subfamily of floral organ regulators contribute. https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koad246 Chaoqun Shena,b and Matthew R. Tuckerb a Joint…

Liese et al. reveal a genetically encoded fluorescent biosensor for CDPK conformational activation. https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koad196 By Anja Liese1,2 and Tina Romeis1,2 1 Department for Biochemistry of Plant Interactions, Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry, D-06120 Halle (Saale),…

Liu and Zhu et al. systematically compare various methods for investigating transcription. The Plant Cell: https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koad237 By M. Liu and Z. Dong Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Plant Adaptation and Molecular Design, Guangzhou Key Laboratory of Crop Gene Editing,…

Phytochemicals, also known as plant secondary metabolites, play primary roles in plant development, structure, and response to the environment. Their metabolism has been studied for over a century. In a new review, Dixon and Dickinson discuss past and recent advances in understanding the identity, localization,…

Plants have a remarkable ability to adapt to stress. For many stresses, plants respond to short-term mild exposure by becoming more tolerant to subsequent harsher stresses that would otherwise be lethal; this effect is known as priming. Priming occurs through several mechanisms that can include changes…

Amino acids (AA) are fundamental components of peptides, proteins, and enzymes that play a critical role in plant growth, cellular metabolism, and stress response. Plants synthesize most AA within chloroplasts and require membrane transporters to transfer them from stroma to cytosol. Cytosolic AA are…

Starch granules are synthesized in leaf chloroplasts during the day and degraded at night to provide carbon. MFP1 (MAR-BINDING FILAMENT-LIKE PROTEIN 1) is known to have a role in starch granule initiation, but its mechanistic role has been unknown. Sharma et al. hypothesized MFP1’s thylakoid localization…