Border cells form at the root tip and are shed during growth, protecting the sensitive root apex from damage as it pushes through the soil. Mravec et al. investigated the cell wall chemistry, carbohydrate distributioion and expression of cell-wall modifying genes to determine the mechanism by which border…

Review: Rubisco activases: AAA+ chaperones adapted to enzyme repair Rubisco, the fundamental enzyme required for photosynthetic carbon fixation, is susceptible to inactivation by the inhibitory binding of various metabolites. Rubisco activases (Rca’s) are enzymes that remodel Rubisco and facilitate…

Brassinosteroid (BR) signaling promotes growth and development by regulating gene expression through the BES1 and BZR1 transcription factors.  Nolan et al. show how plants balance growth and stress tolerance by cross-talk between the BR and autophagy pathways. Under environmental stresses, BES1 is targeted…

Every student of plant cell biology learns that the future plane of cell division is marked very early in mitosis by the preprophase band (PPB), a band of microtubules that forms around the periphery of the cell. Prior experimental studies have suggested that the PPB is necessary for proper placement…

Proteins carry sequence tags that are read by cellular machineries that deliver the proteins to their proper destinations, which include the nucleus, mitochondria and plastid. Many pathogen effector proteins have acquired such targeting tags too, but for these can sometimes be cryptic to bioinformatics…

The path from genome to phenome is difficult to predict. Cañas et al. tried to identify biochemical markers that are correlated with kernel yield that could be selected for in breeding. Specifically, they collected data from metabolomics, enzyme activity assays and metabolic modeling, taken during the…

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a recently discovered form of stable, covalently-closed RNA found in all domains of eukaryotic life. The origins and functions of circRNAs have been under intensive investigation. Often, circRNAs consist of one or more exons, often corresponding to skipped exons from genes…

Chromatin in the nucleus is not randomly arranged. In animal cells, studies have identified an enrichment for non-genic or silenced DNA near the nuclear envelope, as demonstrated by its association with the nuclear lamin proteins. Plants don’t have proteins like animal lamins, but a few envelope-associated…