Plant Physiology: News and Views

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…