Plant Physiology: News and Views

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).…