Plant Physiology: News and Views

If you regularly enjoy a cold glass of orange (Citrus × sinensis) juice, freshly squeezed or store-bought (who has time for the former, really?), then you should know that the future of this drink is at stake. Citrus greening disease or Huánglóngbìng (HLB) has been wreaking havoc on the citrus industry…

Affiliation: University of Melbourne ORCiD: 0000-0001-5092-6168 email: [email protected] Mangrove trees live and thrive in intertidal zones, where they are regularly inundated with salt water. To survive such harsh environmental conditions, they have evolved several features to improve…

Ribosomes are essential molecular machines in the cell that translate mRNA sequences into proteins. Growing parts of an organism produce many ribosomes, so that after each cell division both daughter cells have enough to translate the proteins necessary for growth and development. Defects in ribosomes…

Tianhu Sun ORCID ID: 0000-0002-2513-1387 Plant Breeding and Genetics Section, School of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853 [email protected]  Chloroplasts are semi-autonomous organelles that retain their own genomes derived from their cyanobacterial ancestors,…

Madeleine Seale Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3RB, United Kingdom [email protected] ORCID: 0000-0002-8924-3943   In a world surrounded by a vast expanse of gaseous air, water is constantly evaporating from aqueous sources…

Does a new job always come with a new location? Perhaps this is true for some plant proteins; half of the proteins are located in more than one subcellular compartment. Emerging evidence in plants shows that nuclear-encoded proteins undergo redox and posttranslational modifications or processing events…

Stefanie Wege (University of Adelaide), Alexis De Angeli (Université de Montpellier) Electrical signals or action potentials are present in animals, plants, and other organisms such as single-celled diatoms (Moran et al., 2015; Hedrich et al., 2016; Helliwell et al., 2019). Electrical signals are…

Ananya Mukherjee ORCID ID: 0000-0003-1802-1806 University of Nebraska Lincoln Genetic screens are a remarkable way of identifying mutations affecting various aspects of plant growth and development. Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) (T)-DNA insertion lines enable rapid identification of mutant…

Author: David S. Favero1 (ORCID: 0000-0002-6879-0323) [email protected] Affiliation: 1RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science, Yokohama, Kanagawa, 230-0045 Japan  Main text: As autotrophs, plants must maintain photosynthesis to thrive. In order for this to happen, a plant’s…

Author: Sjon Hartman ORCID: 0000-0002-6709-6436 Plant Ecophysiology, Institute of Environmental Biology, Utrecht University, Padualaan 8, 3584 CH, Utrecht, The Netherlands [email protected]          Avoiding the shade of neighboring plants is essential to optimize light capture and…

Yunqing Yu Donald Danforth Plant Science Center Kellogg Lab SAINT LOUIS, MO 63132 United States of America [email protected] Flowering plants have evolved enormous diversity and complexity of inflorescence architecture. One great model for studying complex inflorescence development and…

Metallic action! The dynamics of a tripartite iron uptake complex in Arabidopsis roots  By Marcelo Lattarulo Campos Integrative Plant Research Laboratory, Departamento de Botânica e Ecologia, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso, Cuiabá/MT, Brazil. ORCID ID: 0000-0001-6235-5120 Twitter:…

To grow or not to grow: specific lipoxygenases control wound-induced growth restriction Amna Mhamdi Ghent University, Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, and VIB Center for Plant Systems Biology, 9052 Ghent, Belgium Address correspondence to: [email protected] As…

Sophia G. Zebell Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY, USA [email protected] Over the past 10 years, utilization of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing in plants has rapidly and significantly altered the scale and scope of both basic research and crop development.…

Kasper van Gelderen Utrecht University [email protected] Plants cannot live without light, but they also cannot live with too much light. Beyond a certain threshold, a high light intensity will damage the photosynthetic apparatus directly. Furthermore, high light leads to the production of reactive…

Author: Sjon Hartman ORCID: 0000-0002-6709-6436 Plant Ecophysiology, Institute of Environmental Biology, Utrecht University, Padualaan 8, 3584 CH, Utrecht, The Netherlands [email protected] Ripening of climacteric fruits such as banana (Musa acuminata), tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), and…

Javier Edgardo Moreno ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9763-5325 Twitter: @JaviMorenoOK Instituto de Agrobiotecnología del Litoral (UNL-Conicet), Facultad de Bioquímica y Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad Nacional del Litoral Santa Fe 3000, Argentina   Cellular respiration is at the core…

Madeleine Seale University of Oxford [email protected] Callose is a cell wall component that is dynamically deposited and degraded during pollen development. Thanks to a new paper investigating pollen formation in cotton (Gossypium hirsutum), we now know that a pollen-specific protein…

Lena Maria Müller Boyce Thompson Institute [email protected] Plants are in constant contact with millions of microbes, which can be pathogenic or establish mutualistic interactions with the plant. One well-studied mutualistic interaction is the nodulation symbiosis of legumes with nitrogen-fixing…

Guillaume Charrier Université Clermont Auvergne, INRAE, PIAF, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, France. [email protected] Water potential (Ψ) defines the energy required to move water between the different compartments of a closed system. Water flows passively in the direction of decreasing…

Charles Copeland1 1Department of Plant Microbe Interactions, Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, 50829 Cologne, Germany ORCID: 0000-0001-8535-8615 [email protected]   As plants grow, they produce new organs such as leaves, lateral roots, and flowers. Plant development…

Elisa Dell’Aglio Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon Lyon, France [email protected]  The ascomycete Blumeria graminis f. sp. hordei (Bgh) is a powdery mildew causal agent, specifically adapted to barley (Hordeum vulgare), wheat (Triticum aestivum, Triticum turgidum)…

Name Marc Somssich Affiliation University of Melbourne ORCiD 0000-0001-5092-6168 [email protected] Lignification of cell walls is a pivotal process in plant life. Lignin is a biopolymer that provides additional stability to secondary cell walls (SCWs), enables vascular cells to…

Amna Mhamdi Ghent University, Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, and VIB Center for Plant Systems Biology, 9052 Ghent, Belgium Address correspondence to [email protected] Stress signals trigger systemic signaling and acclimation. The propagation of reactive oxygen species…

Tianhu Sun ORCID ID: 0000-0002-2513-1387 Plant Breeding and Genetics Section, School of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853 [email protected] Plant seed oils (such as canola oil, sunflower oil, and soybean oil) are important for the human diet and store energy…

Marc-Sven Roell1 ORCID ID: 0000-0003-2714-8729 1Institute of Plant Biochemistry, Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, Universitätsstrasse 1, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany [email protected] The agronomic application of nanotechnology harbors huge potential for future agriculture (Landry…

Scott Hayes Affiliation: Laboratory of Plant Physiology, Wageningen University, Wageningen 6708 PB, The Netherlands ORCiD: 0000-0001-8943-6238 [email protected] To breed or not to breed, that is the question. The switch from vegetative to reproductive growth is one of the most important…

Author: Stefanie Wege ORCID: 0000-0002-7232-5889 [email protected] Affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, PRC, School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, Waite Research Institute, University of Adelaide, Waite Campus, Glen Osmond 5064, South Australia, Australia   Most…

Dhineshkumar Thiruppathi 1,2  ORCID ID: 0000-0002-2018-3356 Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, Saint Louis, Missouri 63132 1Senior author 2Author for contact: [email protected] Seed (kernel) size affects evolutionary fitness and crop yield. In angiosperms, seed size…

Michael J. Skelly ORCID ID: 0000-0002-9024-0037 Institute of Molecular Plant Sciences, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3BF, United Kingdom [email protected] Plants have the remarkable ability to regenerate tissues and organs in response to wounding. This…

Marc-Sven Roell1 ORCID ID: 0000-0003-2714-8729 1Institute of Plant Biochemistry, Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, Universitätsstrasse 1, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany [email protected] Cannabis sativa (cannabis) is the cornerstone of the multi-billion-dollar legal marijuana industry.…

Charlotte Gommers, Assistant Features Editor [email protected] For a long time, the study of light fueled two independent fields of plant sciences. On the one hand, light energy is absorbed in the chloroplasts, to drive sugar production via photosynthesis. On the other hand, light is an…

Kasper van Gelderen Plant Ecophysiology, Dept. of Biology, Utrecht University, Padualaan 8 3584CH, Utrecht, The Netherlands. The study of plant movement towards light, also called phototropism, has a venerable history with giants such as Charles Darwin and Frits Went involved in its study, which…

Molecular breeding relies on careful assessment of phenotypic traits linked to DNA markers so that causal genes can be identified and desirable crop alleles selected. Over the past decade, DNA markers have become abundant with the rapid advancement of next-generation sequencing technology, including…

Sam Amsbury Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, Sheffield, UK ORCiD: 0000-0002-2767-9768 [email protected] The physical and chemical barrier provided by the cell wall is one of the first lines of defence for plants against pathogen attack. Plant cell walls provide physical protection…

Ananya Mukherjee University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588 ORCID ID: 0000-0003-1802-1806 [email protected] Photosynthetic organisms often face fluctuations in light quality and quantity. Green plants and algae have built-in mechanisms that allow them to adapt to such changes. One…

Wei Zhang ORCID: 0000-0002-5092-643X Department of Plant Pathology, Kansas State University, 1712 Claflin Road, Throckmorton Hall, Manhattan, KS, 66506, USA [email protected] Deposition of different chemical groups onto RNA generates diverse RNA modifications. All types of prokaryotic and…

Author: Robert Skelton [email protected] Affiliation: South African Environmental Observation Network, Private Bag X7, Claremont, 7735, South Africa Knowledge of the spatio-temporal dynamics of water storage in plant stems is fundamental to understanding plant physiological function under…

Guillaume Charrier Université Clermont Auvergne, INRAE, PIAF, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, France. [email protected] Leaves are specialized for the photosynthetic assimilation of atmospheric carbon, but they also are responsible for the transpiration of water into the atmosphere, as…

Author: Sjon Hartman ORCID: 0000-0002-6709-6436 Plant Ecophysiology, Institute of Environmental Biology, Utrecht University, Padualaan 8, 3584 CH, Utrecht, The Netherlands  At least 80% of eukaryotic proteins are estimated to undergo N-terminal acetylation (NTA), making it likely that your…

Author: David S. Favero1 (ORCID: 0000-0002-6879-0323) [email protected] Affiliation: 1RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science, Yokohama, Kanagawa, 230-0045 Japan  Plant growth and development are regulated by a complex network of signals, many of which converge at the nucleus and…

By Marcelo Lattarulo Campos Integrative Plant Research Laboratory, Departamento de Botânica e Ecologia, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso, Cuiabá/MT, Brazil. ORCID ID: 0000-0001-6235-5120 [email protected]   The ability of a pathogen to successfully…

Eva Hellmann, The Sainsbury Laboratory, University of Cambridge, CB2 1LR Cambridge, United Kingdom [email protected] Phosphorus (P) is an essential plant nutrient and makes up part of membranes, DNA and RNA; it also serves as energy currency in the form of ATP cycling. It is involved…

Lena Maria Müller Boyce Thompson Institute, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA 0000-0002-6036-4514 [email protected]   The shoot and inflorescence architecture of grasses are characterized by complex branching patterns, which contribute to the great diversity of this plant clade (Whipple 2017).…

Kerri Hunter Viikki Plant Science Centre, Organismal and Evolutionary Biology Research Programme, Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland ORCID: 0000-0002-2285-6999 [email protected] Endocytosis is the process by which extracellular…

Tianhu Sun ORCID ID: 0000-0002-2513-1387 Plant Breeding and Genetics Section, School of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853 [email protected] Astaxanthin is the reddish carotenoid pigment that gives color to shrimp, salmon, and flamingo. However, these animals…

The gardeners among us know that direct sunlight is a prerequisite to obtain full-sized, bright red tomato  (Solanum lycopersicum) fruits. Indeed, light increases the accumulation of yellow and red carotenoid pigments, particularly lycopene, in ripe tomato fruits while it also boosts chlorophyll levels…

Dhineshkumar Thiruppathi 1,2  ORCID ID: 0000-0002-2018-3356 Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, Saint Louis, Missouri 63132 1Author for contact: [email protected] 2Lead author Plant development and adjustment to the environment require not only tight regulation of core…

Author: Sjon Hartman 1,2 ORCID: 0000-0002-6709-6436 1 Plant Ecophysiology, Institute of Environmental Biology, Utrecht University, Padualaan 8, 3584 CH, Utrecht, The Netherlands 2 Corresponding author contact: [email protected] Even moderate droughts can greatly limit plant performance…

Circadian rhythms are ubiquitous among living things. A core set of so-called clock genes and their products assemble an oscillatory network that provides a rhythm to anticipate dawn and dusk (Hsu and Harmer, 2014). The circadian clock regulates the day/night rhythms of plants and light itself has many…

Author: Stefanie Wege [email protected] ORCID: 0000-0002-7232-5889 Affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, Plant Research Centre, School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, Waite Research Institute, University of Adelaide, Waite Campus, Glen Osmond 5064, South…

Author Anne-Sophie Fiorucci [email protected] Affiliation Centre for Integrative Genomics, Faculty of Biology and Medicine, Génopode Building, University of Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. ORCID number 0000-0002-3254-5967 Growth and defense are usually opposed…

Programmed cell death (PCD) is a genetically controlled process triggered by developmental or environmental cues. Plant–microbe interactions often lead to PCD in plant host cells, triggered by the hypersensitive response. Plants may recognize microbes through receptor-like kinases in the plasma membrane,…

To anticipate daily changes imposed by Earth's rotation, organisms from all domains of life have evolved an endogenous 24-h timer with daily rhythmic functions: the circadian clock. In plants, the first organisms where circadian dynamics were observed, the circadian clock processes daylength information…

Michael J. Skelly University of Edinburgh Edinburgh, United Kingdom [email protected] Fruit ripening is a process unique to plants that makes their fruit more appealing to seed-dispersing animals. Ripening involves a combination of physiological and metabolic reprogramming events that lead to…

Magdalena Julkowska, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology [email protected] ORCID: 0000-0002-4259-8296  Although plant genomes typically contain hundreds of miRNA encoding genes, we know little about how miRNA expression is regulated (Wang et al., 2019). The expression…

Magdalena Julkowska, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology [email protected] ORCID: 0000-0002-4259-8296 Photosynthetic organisms can be found across most environments on Earth, including the most extreme ones. The McMurdo Valleys in Antarctica are among the driest…

Many proteins have a clearly defined structure-function relationship – specific three-dimensional folds can be linked to specific protein functions. We do however know that many proteins – referred to as intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) – lack rigid three-dimensional organisation. In recent…

Emily R Larson [email protected] School of Biological Science, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK ORCID: 0000-0002-5498-8152 Pollen tube growth through plant pistil tissues requires interactions between the male and female cells to regulate compatibility (McCormick, 1998), and hormonal…

Ananya Mukherjee [email protected] Affiliation University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588 ORCiD : 0000-0003-1802-1806 Fatty acid synthesis is a ubiquitous pathway in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Plants synthesize fatty acids for a variety of uses including membrane bilayers and…

Wei Zhang ORCID: 0000-0002-5092-643X Department of Plant Pathology, Kansas State University, 1712 Claflin Road, Throckmorton Hall, Manhattan, KS, 66506, USA [email protected] Nucleotide-binding domain leucine-rich repeat (NLR) proteins serve as intracellular immune receptors in plants to…

Dhineshkumar Thiruppathi 1,2  ORCID ID: 0000-0002-2018-3356 Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, Saint Louis, Missouri 63132 1Lead author 2Author for contact: [email protected] The phytohormone auxin plays a major part in nearly every plant process, including growth…

Charles Copeland1 [email protected] 1Department of Plant Microbe Interactions, Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, 50829 Cologne, Germany Plants rely on a complex innate immune system to recognize and respond to potential pathogens in their environment (Jones and Dangl, 2006).…

By Marcelo Lattarulo Campos [email protected] Integrative Plant Research Laboratory, Departamento de Botânica e Ecologia, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso, Cuiabá/MT, Brazil. A fundamental tenet of any immune system is the ability to detect the presence…

Eva Hellmann, The Sainsbury Laboratory, University of Cambridge, CB2 1LR Cambridge, United Kingdom, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4591-2973 [email protected]   Small secreted peptides (SSPs) are short peptides that function as messengers and regulate a variety of processes in plants…

Meisha Holloway-Phillips Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Basel, Switzerland [email protected] The slogan, ‘more crop per drop’, which was popularised in the early 2000s, depicts the need to improve the productivity of crops for the same water inputs (Kijne…

As someone with a background in plant molecular genetics, I confess to occasionally forgetting about location. Reverse genetics is a powerful tool for picking apart gene networks, but in which organ do these genes act? Which tissue of that organ? Which cells of that tissue and which compartment of those…

Lena Maria Müller Boyce Thompson Institute, Ithaca, NY, USA Nitrogen (N) is a critical element in plant nutrition and an important building block of amino acids, nucleic acids, and secondary metabolites. Roots take up N mainly in the form of nitrate (NO3-) and ammonium (NH4+). To feed a growing…

Kim L Johnson La Trobe Institute for Agriculture & Food, Department of Animal, Plant and Soil Sciences, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria 3086, Australia Email: [email protected] At least some of the clothing you are wearing is likely made of cotton, and you are not alone. Cotton…

Sugars have a key role in numerous cellular processes, and thus their storage and distribution are tightly controlled to ensure appropriate access when needed. In plants, the vacuole is the major storage organelle. The tonoplast (vacuole membrane) contains various transporters that regulate sugar and…

Author Anne-Sophie Fiorucci Affiliation Centre for Integrative Genomics, Faculty of Biology and Medicine, Génopode Building, University of Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. ORCID number 0000-0002-3254-5967 DNA replication allows doubling of the genomic content of a cell before…

Marc-Sven Roell1 ORCID ID: 0000-0003-2714-8729 1Institute of Plant Biochemistry, Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, Universitätsstrasse 1, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany [email protected] To cope with various abiotic and biotic stress factors, plants must be facile in adapting cellular…

Vitamin B12 (B12) is produced only by prokaryotes (Fang et al., 2017), but is also widely required among eukaryotes as an enzymatic cofactor. In the green lineage, the only B12-dependent enzyme is methionine synthase. Several green algae can synthesize methionine only thanks to B12 provided by mutualistic…

Plants produce a plethora of specialized metabolites serving as a chemical arsenal against abiotic and biotic challenges during their lifetime. Core metabolites serve as building blocks for diverse decorating enzymes like oxidases, reductases or transferases that introduce new functionalities expanding…

Elisa Dell’Aglio1 and Amna Mhamdi2 1 Institut National des Sciences Appliquées-Lyon, 69100 Villeurbanne, France 2 Ghent University, Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, and VIB Center for Plant Systems Biology, 9052 Ghent, Belgium Address correspondence to [email protected]   Ascorbate…

Sophia G. Zebell Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY, USA Manipulation of ripening, the process that turns hard, flavorless green tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum) into the juicy, aromatic red fruits enjoyed worldwide, is of particular commercial…

Madeleine Seale Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3RB, United Kingdom [email protected] ORCID: 0000-0002-8924-3943   Responding to environmental stresses is crucial for plant survival. Research published this month in Plant…

Raimund Nagel University of Leipzig [email protected] Gibberellins (GA) are essential hormones that control plant development as major regulators of stem elongation, germination, dormancy, flowering, leaf senescence and fruit development (Hedden and Thomas, 2012). Their biosynthesis…

Wei Zhang Department of Plant Pathology, Kansas State University, 1712 Claflin Road, Throckmorton Hall, Manhattan, KS, 66502, USA [email protected] ORCID 0000-0002-5092-643X Plants have evolved many pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) that localize to the cell surface. As the frontline…

Michael J. Skelly [email protected] To ensure optimal growth and development, plants must precisely control gene expression networks in a tissue-specific manner. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of small non-coding RNA molecules that post-transcriptionally silence genes by binding to complementary…

It might be a little known fact, even among plant biologists, that in embryos of many species of the Fabaceae, most oilseed plants and Arabidopsis thaliana embryos can photosynthesize within the seed (Tejos et al., 2010). We do not know why plant embryos have this capacity, since embryos are surrounded…

Magdalena M. Julkowska, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, ORCID: 0000-0002-4259-8296 [email protected] Water transport is essential for many physiological processes in vascular plants. One of the forces driving water transport across roots…

Dhineshkumar Thiruppathi 1,2  ORCID ID: 0000-0002-2018-3356 Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, Saint Louis, Missouri 63132 1Lead author 2Author for contact: [email protected]   Potassium (K+) is the most abundant intracellular cation in all living organisms…

Author: Stefanie Wege [email protected] ORCID: 0000-0002-7232-5889 Affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, PRC, School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, Waite Research Institute, University of Adelaide, Waite Campus, Glen Osmond 5064, South Australia, Australia   In…

Department of Plant Pathology, Kansas State University, 1712 Claflin Road, Throckmorton Hall, Manhattan, KS, 66506, USA [email protected] Male fertility in angiosperms requires specific spatiotemporal gene expression patterns and cellular differentiation during male reproductive development (Wilson…

If you close your eyes and think about the most delicious fruit you have ever tasted, it is likely that one specific characteristic will come to mind (and mouth!): its sweetness. Humans have a natural appreciation of plant sugars, and it is no surprise that enhanced sugar content is among the most desired…

The formation of the mature female gametophyte is one of the most complex processes in plants. It requires successive rounds of diploid mitosis, followed by meiosis and finally haploid mitosis, not to mention cell differentiation and cell degeneration in the multicellular gametophyte. Since the female…

Ananya Mukherjee ORCID ID: 0000-0003-1802-1806 [email protected] University of Nebraska Lincoln Lincoln, NE 68588   Climate change is expected to make drought far more severe and frequent for plants all over the world (Bartlett et al., 2016). Drought affects yield, growth, and development…

Tianhu Sun ORCID ID: 0000-0002-2513-1387 Plant Breeding and Genetics Section, School of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853 [email protected] Plant cells harbor a varying number of chloroplasts and chloroplasts multiply by division to maintain the continuity…

Madeleine Seale Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3RB, United Kingdom [email protected] ORCID: 0000-0002-8924-3943 Wood formation occurs via radial proliferation of vascular cambium cells and the deposition of secondary cell wall layers…

Ananya Mukherjee ORCID ID: 0000-0003-1802-1806 [email protected] University of Nebraska Lincoln Lincoln, NE 68588    In the photosynthetic Calvin-Benson cycle, the enzyme ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco) fixes CO2 into organic compounds. A major limitation…

A well-oiled machine: two fatty-acid exporters involved in seed oil biosynthesis Mehran Dastmalchi [email protected] Oilseed plants such as canola (Brassica spp.) are a massive, multi-billion dollar industry, with their lipids contributing to food, cosmetics, polymers and biofuels. For the…

Magdalena M. Julkowska [email protected]   Developmental and environmental changes are communicated systemically throughout the plant by various signals, ranging from electric currents to plant hormones. As the responses elicited by the systemic signals depend on the tissue…

Lynn GL Richardson, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48843 During germination and early seedling establishment, embryos rely on stored energy for growth and cellular maintenance until photoautotrophic growth takes over. Proteins and lipids make up most of the energy-rich stores in the embryo,…

Lignin is a complex aromatic biopolymer in the secondary cell wall of vascular plants. It is crucial for providing physical strength and pathogen resistance to the plant. Lignified xylem vessels are also necessary for efficient water transport. Lignin is formed by oxidative polymerization of monomers…

When air temperatures rise above the comfortable level, plants initiate a cooling mechanism to prevent heat stress. High ambient temperatures induce a specific set of growth responses, termed thermomorphogenesis, which includes enhanced hypocotyl and petiole elongation, and leaf hyponasty (reviewed by…

Magdalena Julkowska [email protected]  Reacting to the environment requires not only activating signaling cascades but also modulating the activity of individual components in a context- and time-dependent manner. For example, under non-stress conditions protein phosphatases 2C…

Amna Mhamdi Ghent University, Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, and VIB Center for Plant Systems Biology, 9052 Ghent, Belgium Address correspondence to [email protected] Long thought to be unselective and often referred to as "housekeeping" enzymes, type 2A Protein…

C4 photosynthesis originated as an adaptation to low atmospheric CO2 concentrations 30-35 million years ago (Sage, 2016). Although accounting for only 3% of the vascular plants on earth, C4 plants contribute 25% of terrestrial photosynthesis (Westhoff and Gowik, 2010), thus providing a highly desirable…

Meisha Holloway-Phillips Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Basel, Switzerland [email protected] When trees are subjected to soil water deficits, some leaves and branches show signs of stress or die before others in the canopy. Why is that? Here I highlight recent…

Magda Julkowska [email protected]   In response to stress, secondary messengers and rapid and reversible protein phosphorylation contribute to signaling cascades that generate unique signatures indicating stress type and severity. Activation of stress-induced signaling cascades…

When rays of light enter a plant cell, they find their way to the chlorophyll pigments located in the chloroplast. Chlorophyll molecules are embedded in the light reaction complexes photosystem I (PSI) and photosystem II (PSII), which capture and store the energy needed for carbon fixation in the Calvin…

For the past two decades, glyphosate has been the most used herbicide worldwide, resulting in prolonged, extreme selection pressure for glyphosate-resistant (GR) weeds.  Glyphosate’s only target as a herbicide is 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS), an enzyme of the shikimate pathway. …

Much like the spikes that deter birds from sitting on fences, trichomes — hair like projections on the leaf surface — are the epidermis’ first line of defence, discouraging insects and other pests (Levin, 1973). In addition to their role protecting the plant, trichomes are an excellent marker to…

Magdalena M. Julkowska [email protected] Improvement of crops using traditional breeding is too slow to ensure food production able to sustain the growing human population, especially in the face of climate change (Hickey et al., 2019). Transformation methods for monocot crops depend…

Magdalena M. Julkowska [email protected] Stomata are the gatekeepers of plant water status, regulating the balance between plant CO2 uptake and water loss. Stomatal conductance (gs) can be estimated by microscopy of wax or plastic leaf surface imprints, but this technique is time…

Author: Masanori Izumi Affiliation: RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science, Wako 351-0198, Japan [email protected] Autophagy is the ubiquitous process in eukaryotes leading to the degradation of intracellular components, during which a portion of the cytoplasm, including organelles,…

Maria Grazia Annunziata Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, 14476 Potsdam-Golm, Germany. ORCID ID: 0000-0001-8593-1741 By acting as redox regulatory factor, NADPH-dependent thioredoxin reductase C (NTRC) is involved in many metabolic processes as well as plastid biogenesis. It…

Tessa Moses The Institute of Quantitative Biology, Biochemistry and Biotechnology (IQB3), The King’s Buildings, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3BF, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected], ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9366-4727 WRKY1 is a member of the WRKY transcription factor family…

Author: Robert P Skelton1 [email protected] Affiliation: Dept. of Integrative Biology, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA  Global demand for food security places an emphasis on a need to improve crop yield. The complexity of plant development and its interaction…

Kim L Johnson La Trobe Institute for Agriculture & Food, Department of Animal, Plant and Soil Sciences, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria 3086, Australia In September 2019 hurricane Dorian swept across to the southeast coast of the USA and strong winds and downpours led to major crop…

Emily R Larson, [email protected] Vesicle transport is one of those molecular processes that is easy to take for granted. From cell expansion and polarised growth to protein regulation and signalling, vesicle trafficking plays its unsung part. We tend to believe that we know a lot about this…

Lynn GL Richardson [email protected] Department of Plant Biology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824 Chloroplasts, like their cyanobacterial ancestors, use binary fission to divide and generate new organelles. The origins of the division machinery stem from both the original eukaryotic…

Scott Hayes, [email protected] The adoption of Arabidopsis thaliana as a model plant in the early 1980s led to a revolution in plant molecular genetics. Its diminutive size, rapid generation time and small genome made Arabidopsis a fantastic tool, allowing us to build a complex picture of the genetic…

Raimund Nagel Universität Leipzig Department of Plant Physiology Leipzig, Saxony 04103 Germany [email protected] Dalmatian chrysanthemum (Tanacetum cinerariifolium) contains pyrethrins, which are highly effective natural insecticides that are nontoxic to most animals and biodegradable.…

The yield of key food crops (i.e., wheat [Triticum aestivum], rice [Oryza sativa], maize [Zea mays], and sorghum [Sorghum biocolor]) relies on their production of seeds, while the propagation of almost all crops is seed-dependent. Seed set in turn relies on the production of flowers containing the male…

The plant cell wall is a complex structure composed of cellulose embedded in a matrix of polysaccharides (hemicellulose and pectin), phenolic compounds and proteins. The primary cell wall is a thin layer formed in growing cells and is present ubiquitously, whereas the secondary cell wall is a rigid and…

Western cultivated carrot (Daucus carota subsp. sativus L) is broadly known for its orange pigmentation and accumulation of carotenoids, known as the carotene group (var. sativus). However, the eastern wild carrot (subsp. carota) originating from southwestern Asia over a century ago provides purple pigmentation…

Sidney L. Shaw Dept. of Biology (and Physics), Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405 [email protected]   How cell expansion is controlled to achieve a specific cell morphology remains one of the frontier questions in plant biology.  The carefully guided extension of the plant…

Author: Trevor H. Yeats, Email: [email protected] Plant Breeding & Genetics Section, School of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell University, Ithaca NY USA (Commentary on Liu et al.) Lipid synthesis is a ubiquitous, but costly branch of primary metabolism in plants. All cells must make…

Amna Mhamdi Ghent University, Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, and VIB Center for Plant Systems Biology, 9052 Ghent, Belgium Address correspondence to [email protected] NONEXPRESSER OF PR GENES 1 (NPR1) controls plant immunity and is key to salicylic acid (SA)-dependent…

A major challenge in modern agriculture is to increase crop yield with diminishing agricultural land to feed the fast-growing global population. The erect leaf phenotype is a highly desirable trait that allows for higher planting density and maximizes light interception capacity and thus increases photosynthetic…

Maria Grazia Annunziata Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, 14476 Potsdam-Golm, Germany. [email protected] ORCID ID: 0000-0001-8593-1741 Rubisco (ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase) is the central enzyme of photosynthetic carbon assimilation in the…

Author: Skelton, Robert Paul [email protected] Institution: Department of Integrative Biology, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720. Burying one’s head in the sand is usually synonymous with avoiding an issue, but in this volume of Plant Physiology Colombi et al. (2019)…

Plant hormones are frequently modified by glycosylation, hydroxylation, methylation and other conjugations, and these modifications can alter the hormone’s activity and stability (Wang et al., 2019). The phytohormone salicylic acid orchestrates effective defense and mediates local and systemic-acquired…

Providing around 20% of global calories, rice (Oryza sativa) is one of the most important staple crops (Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP), 2013). With consumption particularly increasing in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, it is vital to increase rice yields to supply the…

Pyrimidine nucleotides (e.g., dCTP, dTTP, UTP, and CTP) are essential building blocks for DNA and RNA synthesis in all organisms. In plants, sucrose and cell wall polymer synthesis depend on pyrimidine nucleotide-derived substrates, such as UDP-glucose, and important classes of membrane lipids are made…

Author: Masanori Izumi Affiliation: RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science, Wako 351-0198, Japan Newly synthesized proteins must be folded to form their proper 3D structures. Stresses perturb protein folding, thereby leading to the hyperaccumulation of misfolded or aggregated proteins. Such…

Dr. Raimund Nagel Iowa State University Plants produce a plethora of natural products that function as defensive compounds are frequently used by humans for medicinal purposes. A majority of these natural products, however, are either found in low concentrations, in slow growing plants, or are…

Meisha Holloway-Phillips Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Basel, Switzerland [email protected] Since Terashima and Saeki (1983) demonstrated that light attenuation through the leaf was accompanied by spectral changes, there has been increasing interest in how light…

Maria Grazia Annunziata Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, 14476 Potsdam-Golm, Germany. Lignin is a class of complex aromatic polymers particularly important in the formation of cell walls, especially in wood and bark. Lignin contributes to plant structure, support and defence…

Lynn GL Richardson Department of Plant Biology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824 Positive strand (+) RNA viruses act as their own messengers, encoding an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase that can replicate their sense RNA genome. This allows (+)RNA viruses to replicate outside the…

Commentary by Maria Papanatsiou We live an era where omic approaches are essential to decode scientific hypotheses. Indeed, technological advances have accelerated science, resulting in a plethora of insights.  During the past decade, the plant science community has profited from using large and…

Amna Mhamdi, Ghent University, Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, and VIB Center for Plant Systems Biology, 9052 Ghent, Belgium Defense reactions are the fascinating result of a complex network between signals, receptors and effectors, where any missed nodes may spell disaster.…

Author:         Magdalena M. Julkowska Affiliation:      Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering, King Abdullah University for Science & Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Saudi Arabia   Auxin is one of the most studied plant hormones, and it comes in various forms. Whereas…

Author: Robert P. Skelton Institution: Dept. of Integrative Biology, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, 94720; CA Commentary on Hochberg et al A new technique for rapidly quantifying xylem vulnerability curves In this volume of Plant Physiology, Hochberg et al. (2019) present a…

By Lynn GL Richardson The acid-growth theory was proposed over 40 years ago based on early observations that low apoplastic pH promotes growth in a pathway involving the plant hormone auxin (Rayle and Cleland, 1992; Hager, 2003; Arsuffi and Braybrook, 2018). Since this discovery, a clearer understanding…

Bethany Huot, Michigan State University Driving through the country on a lazy summer day with a nice gentle breeze, the lush fields of wheat, corn and soybean appear peaceful. What you cannot see is the quiet war plants are fighting against the insects and pathogens that have pulled up to a feast…

Signaling within and between cells is fast and dynamic. Such signals can involve the transport of charged ions that change membrane polarity or intercellular gradients, protein de/phosphorylation, protein interactions, and phytohormones, among others. The change in protein distribution in response to…

Organ boundaries are junctions that separate initiating lateral organs from the meristem or other plant parts. Cells at the boundary often exhibit slow growth rates and morphology distinct from that of the surrounding cells, and their development are controlled by complex gene networks. Lateral organ…

Plants rely on light for photosynthesis. As a consequence, plant growth is strongly shaped by light availability, to optimize photon absorbance in the green tissues. Seedlings that germinated underground grow quickly to escape from the darkness, while plants that are threatened to be overgrown by neighbors…

Plants emit scented volatile compounds to attract pollinators, or alternatively, as direct or indirect plant defense mechanisms. Direct defense involves compounds that are toxic, whereas an indirect defense uses volatiles to attract parasitoids of insect herbivores (Unsicker et al., 2009; Maag et al.,…

Tropic movement in plants (movement in relation to a directional stimulus) has fascinated thinkers since ancient times (reviewed in Whippo and Hangarter, 2006). This interest has led us to a good molecular understanding of how for example, plants direct their shoots towards light and their roots towards…

Kim L Johnson La Trobe Institute for Agriculture & Food, Department of Animal, Plant and Soil Sciences, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria 3086, Australia Flowers are mostly associated with pleasant smells; the sweet fragrance of a rose, the exotic scent of jasmine, the fresh smell of…

By Maria Grazia Annunziata Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, 14476 Potsdam-Golm, Germany. The plant leaf apoplast is composed of all extracellular compartments beyond the plasmalemma and is filled with gas, water and cell wall elements (Sattelmacher, 2000). The apoplast is involved…

Author: Masanori Izumi Affiliation: Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences, Tohoku University, Sendai 980–8578, Japan Mitochondria are active organelles that move rapidly, change shape and undergo repeated fusion and fission (Frederick and Shaw, 2007; Tilokani et al., 2018).…

Salt stress affects plant growth and development at all stages, reducing germination, and compromising seedling establishment, transpiration, and root growth (Munns and Tester, 2008). At later developmental stages, the overaccumulation of salt ions in the shoot disrupts photosynthesis and other vital…

Plants may appear to be sitting ducks to whatever pest, pathogen or bad weather assaults them, but they are far from defenseless. In fact, plants are artful masters of war, armed with elaborate physical and chemical defense systems. But, in many cases, optimizing growth and defense is like running a…

Brassinosteroids (BRs) have come a long way since their first identification in 1979 as pollen-derived, growth-promoting hormones. Multiple studies have demonstrated roles for BRs in the control of cell elongation, pollen fertility, root architecture, seed germination, stomatal patterning, vascular development,…

Vesicle trafficking is indispensable, playing critical roles in plant growth, development, and stress responses, and trafficking to the plasma membrane is an important contributor to cell expansion and cell wall remodeling (reviewed in Lipka et al., 2007; Grefen and Blatt, 2008). Vesicle budding, trafficking…

The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) has been likened to the manufacturing and packaging department of a factory, an action packed production area that distributes things to the rest of the cell. The ER does this by forming complex networks of tubules and cisternae that connect to other membranous organelles.…

Climate change is causing more extreme weather patterns and increasing challenges for agriculture. The unusually dry European summer of 2018 caused an 8% drop in cereal production (source: https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/food-farming-fisheries/farming/documents/short-term-outlook-autumn-2018_en.pdf).…

One goal of synthetic biology is to build artificial pathways for bioengineering of high value compounds. To this end, pathways are not only split into individual reactions, but the expression of one enzyme is also split into individual parts (e.g., promotors, ribosomal binding sites, coding sequences,…

The transcription of many genes is regulated through alternative splicing, with over 60 percent of genes in Arabidopsis thaliana producing more than one mRNA [1]. The most common forms of alternative splicing are intron retention and the use of alternative polyadenylation sites that result in transcripts…

The Poaceae is one of the largest plant families in angiosperms, containing more than 12,000 grass species, which are classified into two major clades: PACMAD (Panicoideae, Arundinoideae, Chloridoideae, Micrairoideae, Aristidoideae and Danthonioideae) and BOP (Bambusoideae, Oryzoideae and Pooideae) (Fig.…

For a number of crops agricultural yields have been boosted by the phenomenon of heterosis or hybrid vigour, where a hybrid outperforms either parent. Understanding the various mechanisms by which heterosis arises may facilitate the breeding of hybrids with increased vigour for further crop varieties…

Author: Masanori Izumi Affiliation: Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences, Tohoku University, Sendai 980–8578, Japan Plants are photoautotrophs that grow via photosynthetic energy production. Under irradiation, chloroplasts in the plant’s green tissues convert light energy…

Jose M Celedon 1 1 Michael Smith Laboratories, The University of British Columbia, 2185 East Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada. Transcriptomic studies in plants usually involve anonymous survey-style methods, where whole organs or tissues are homogenized, and each cell’s contribution to transcript…

Polar localization of plasma membrane proteins is an important way cells regulate signaling pathways, transport across membranes, and growth. Polarization has obvious cellular effects, but localization of membrane components also contributes significantly to processes such as tip growth in root hairs…

The prohibitin (PHB) protein family is highly conserved from prokaryotes to eukaryotes (Van Aken et al., 2010). Initially identified as a tumor suppressor in rat liver, PHBs in animals are localized in various cell compartments, including mitochondria, nuclei, and plasma membranes, and function as scaffold…

Robert Skelton1 1 Dept. of Integrative Biology, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94707. Stems of land plants provide mechanical support and long-distance transport of water and carbohydrates. Although it has long been recognized that plant stems can also store water, it remains…

By Tessa Moses, The Institute of Quantitative Biology, Biochemistry and Biotechnology (IQB3), The King’s Buildings, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3FF, United Kingdom Photosynthesis is the process in which solar energy is used to fix atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) to chemical energy in…

By Lynn GL Richardson Positive-strand (+)RNA viruses account for the majority of plant viruses. Apart from their significant impact on worldwide agriculture, they also inform our understanding of basic virus biology (Scholthof et al., 2011). Upon entry into the cells of their host, (+)RNA viruses…

By Amna Mhamdi and Charlotte M.M. Gommers The nuclear genome encodes the majority of chloroplast-localized proteins and, in return, chloroplasts exert some control over nuclear gene expression via so-called retrograde signals. These signals derive from developing chloroplasts (referred to as biogenic…

We think of enzymes as highly specific catalysts that carry out one reaction and show nearly absolute substrate specificity. However, absolute specificity is the exception, not the rule, as most enzymes accept several structurally similar substrates. Moreover, many enzymes catalyze alternative reactions…

Most of the carbon dioxide sequestered by plants during photosynthesis is converted into sugars and stored into polysaccharide-enriched cells walls that constitute the majority of the plant biomass. While plants have long been considered a valuable resource of biomaterials for the chemical and textile…

By Amna Mhamdi and Scott Hayes They say you can get too much of a good thing, and for plants that is certainly true. Light is essential for growth, but excessive light causes an overloading of the plant’s photosynthetic machinery. This excess energy can spill out and, through formation of reactive…

Exocytosis is a form of an active transport in which vesicles fuse with the plasma membrane. This vesicle transport secretes soluble cargo proteins and polysaccharides into the apoplast, but also delivers membrane lipids and transmembrane proteins to the plasma membrane. Vesicle trafficking is initiated…

Climate change is a potent environmental force that all living organisms must contend with. This is especially true for photosynthetic, microalgae that are forced to acclimate to ever changing water temperatures and coordinate changes in their physiology and growth rates (Singh and Singh, 2015). These…

Prokaryotic endosymbiont-derived organelles (i.e. mitochondria and chloroplasts), contain their own genomes and the copy number of organelle genomes per cell is high; indeed, a previous study calculated that in Arabidopsis thaliana, each cell has 1000 to 1700 copies of the chloroplast genome (Zoschke…

Hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is a potent inhibitor of cytochrome c oxidase, a conserved component of the respiratory electron transport chain in all aerobic life. Thus, HCN is well suited to serve as a broad-spectrum chemical defense, and indeed it plays such a role in many interactions between plants and…

Plants devote more than 70% of their available nitrogen to maintaining chloroplast function (Makino and Osmond, 1991). During senescence or under stress conditions, chloroplasts are degraded and their constituent components are recycled. Chloroplasts can be degraded through at least three pathways: (1)…

Plants devote more than 70% of their available nitrogen to maintaining chloroplast function (Makino and Osmond, 1991). During senescence or under stress conditions, chloroplasts are degraded and their constituent components are recycled. Chloroplasts can be degraded through at least three pathways: (1)…

Hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is a potent inhibitor of cytochrome c oxidase, a conserved component of the respiratory electron transport chain in all aerobic life. Thus, HCN is well suited to serve as a broad-spectrum chemical defense, and indeed it plays such a role in many interactions between plants and…

Plants evolved to react to the changing environment by developing sensing and signal transduction mechanisms, which ultimately lead to changes in gene expression and altered plant performance. Transcription factors (TFs) are key to regulating the expression of individual genes. TFs can confer sequence…

Evidence of epigenetic gene regulation in plant immunity was first reported in 1975 (Guseinov et al., 1975) with the demonstration that cytosine methylation is altered in response to pathogen infection. Since then, it has been established that pathogen infection influences DNA methylation and histone…

What we think of as a strawberry is botanically not a berry or even a fruit, but rather multiple fruits (achenes that contain the seeds) on the outside of a swollen receptacle. This technicality aside, strawberries are both economically important and a useful system in which to study seed-fruit communication.…

Light is life, especially for plants. It fuels photosynthesis and, when perceived by photoreceptors, directs important developmental programs, including photomorphogenesis and shade avoidance. Red and blue light wavelengths activate phytochrome (phy) and cryptochrome (cry) photoreceptors, respectively,…

Protein-protein interactions mediate fundamental biological processes. Yeast two-hybrid assays can be used to detect protein-protein interactions in a fast and large-scale manner. However, in traditional yeast-two hybrid assays, the prey and bait proteins must be located in the nucleus to activate reporter…

Depending on the species, daylength profoundly affects the timing of key developmental transitions in plants, including, floral initiation, tuberization, and bud set and growth cessation in trees. To explore additional effects of daylength on plant function, Cagnola et al. (10.1104/pp.18.00443) investigated…

When did you last stop to think about the amazing chemical properties of water? Water is one of the few substances that have a larger volume as a solid than a liquid due to the hexagonal arrangement of molecules that make up ice crystals. For plants, ice crystals forming in the extracellular space of…

As the study of plant variation and characterization moves from measurements of largely organismal-level polymorphisms to those of cellular- and molecular-level traits, the need for morphological measuring tools that incorporate complex trait information is clear. While quantitative methodologies have…

How do you make the invisible visible? It’s a question that crops up again and again in molecular biology. Abscisic acid (ABA) is one of the most important hormones in plants and is essential for survival in suboptimal conditions. Despite this, we have only a basic understanding of where and when this…

Cellulose, the most abundant biopolymer on earth, is an important structural component of the primary and secondary cell wall of plant cells. It is also found in animals (tunicates), oomycetes, and bacteria (Kumar and Turner, 2015). Besides providing support and rigidity in living organisms, cellulose…

Plants live by the clock. It helps them to predict day and night as well as upcoming seasons, and to decide when it’s time for reproduction. These predictions depend on oscillating processes that involve gene transcription and protein stability, cycling in a period of, for example, 24 h. Environmental…

Commentary by Trevor H. Yeats and Raimund Nagel Saffron is produced from the stigmas and styles of Crocus sativus flowers and is one of the most expensive spices. In C. sativus, both stigma and style are intensely crimson red in color due to the presence of three major classes of apocarotenoids: crocins,…

Sulfur (S) is an essential element for cell function and responses to the environment. The primary S source is sulfate, which, following uptake by specific transporters, is reduced and incorporated into the amino acids Cysteine (Cys) and Methionine, and thereafter into proteins and peptides, including…

Roots explore the soil for available water and nutrients, with deep roots providing water from the lower soil layers (Uga et al., 2015) and highly branched roots searching the soil for less-mobile nutrients such as phosphate, zinc, and manganese. Root architecture results from plant developmental programs,…

By Lisa Smith and Nathan Butler Epigenetic modifications in plants repress transposable elements to maintain genome stability and facilitate adaptation to changing environmental conditions by regulating the expression of some genes. Furthermore, conditions such as disease stress can alter the epigenetic…

The year 2016 marked a half-century since the discovery of C4 photosynthesis, yet we still seek to elucidate many of the mechanisms underpinning the C4 cycle. Although C4 and C3 plants share molecular units involved in photosynthesis (Miyao, 2003; Kellogg, 2013), C4 plants have unique morphological traits…

One of the most exciting findings in the past few decades is the discovery that individual mRNAs and noncoding RNAs can act as long-distance signaling messengers traveling cell to cell to distant sites in the plant. Numerous examples unveiled the involvement of endogenous RNAs as non-cell-autonomous…

Boron is an essential plant micronutrient with the narrowest optimal range in the soil of any micronutrient. At neutral pH, boron is present as uncharged boric acid, B(OH)3, which can freely penetrate membranes. Boron plays an important role in cross-linking cell wall components, but boron starvation…

By Rumen Ivanov and David G. Robinson Our knowledge of vacuole biogenesis and the transport of proteins to the vacuole has advanced consistently over the last 30 years. In meristematic cells, the tonoplast appears to develop directly out of the endoplasmic reticulum (Viotti et al., 2013). Once it is…

Oxygen (O2) is evolved during photosynthetic electron transport when water is split by the oxygen-evolving complex to provide protons and electrons to the chloroplastic electron chain, thereby generating ATP and NADPH—the energy source and reducing power for plant metabolism. The majority of this chemical…

The humble spud. Simple, unassuming, yet vital in supporting a large proportion of the world’s population. Historically speaking, much of the research performed on potatoes (Solanum tuberosum) has gone into enhancing their disease resistance, justifiably so given the severe famines brought about through…

The discovery of semidwarfing genes in wheat and rice was a crucial turning point of the Green Revolution in the late 1960s. The Green Revolution aimed to maintain per capita food supplies worldwide despite the projected doubling of global population by the end of the 20th century. Its main features…

Determining the function of a gene often relies on transgenic plants with altered transcriptional or translational levels. This is usually achieved through overexpression, knockout, or knockdown. However, each of these approaches has specific advantages and drawbacks. For instance, knockouts, which…

To regulate the addition of cell wall components as cells expand and to control changes in cell wall composition as cells differentiate, there must be a feedback system that senses the state of the cell wall and transmits this information. The mechanisms underlying cell wall-intracellular signaling remain…

In eukaryotes, chromosomes are linear structures; in contrast, a ring-shaped chromosome is a rare structure that results from the fusion of broken ends of linear chromosomes. Ring chromosomes may be induced by radiation or may occur spontaneously. In humans, ring chromosomes occur in approximately 1:50,000…