Without doubt, Arabidopsis thaliana has thoroughly demonstrated its usefulness as a model species. In this interesting article by Mabry et al. (with an impressive author list!), the authors propose to expand the Arabidopsis toolkit to encompass its entire order – its family of families, the Brassicales.…

Plants are closely associated with large numbers of microbes that live in, on, and around them; these are collectively called the plant microbiota. Microbes can be pathogenic, neutral, or beneficial. Beneficial microbes might enhance nutrient uptake by the plant or suppress pathogenic microbes. There…

In this Letter to the Editor, Dr. Beronda Montgomery discusses umbrella trees (Musanga cecropioides) as metaphors for how to sustain progress after disruption, specifically the decision by the US Supreme Court to ban the use of race-conscious affirmative action in college admissions. Umbrella trees spring…

Genome wide association studies (GWAS) identify genomic loci associated with a specific trait. However, these loci often contain many genes, so selecting which to investigate further can be tricky. To improve this Whitt, et al. developed a program called FiReMAGE (filtering results of multi-species,…

Starch is synthesized in the chloroplasts of leaves during the day and degraded at night. BAM1 (β-AMYLASE 1) catalyzes starch degradation and interacts with the non-catalytic glucan phosphatase called LSF1 (LIKE SEX FOUR 1) and the plastid localised MDH (MALATE DEHYDROGENASE). However, we don’t fully…

Plants release a variety of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including green leaf volatiles (GLVs), terpenoids, and amino acid derivatives, in response to herbivore damage and injury. Healthy neighboring plants detect these VOCs as warning signals, prompting them to activate defense mechanisms. This…

Horticulturalists have long used the technique of meristem culture to propagate plants, as meristems are generally considered to be free of viruses. However, the mechanism by which the stem cells in meristems exclude viruses has been unclear. Here, Incarbone and Bradamante et al. identified roles for…

Review: Development of organs for nutrient uptake in parasitic plants and root nodule symbiosis This review by Cui et al. makes the interesting comparison between the developmental processes involved in root nodule formation and haustoria formation by roots of parasitic plants. As the authors observe,…