Research Blog

How does the cost of nitrogen acquisition affect how an ecosystem responds to elevated CO2? Terrer et al. have addressed this question in a comprehensive review of findings from elevated CO2 experiments, using a plant economics framework. The authors describe ecosystem responses, particularly those of…

Time-lapse imaging reveals the slow movements of plants, such as phototropism and gravitropism. Harmer and Brooks review the molecular bases for these growth-mediated movements. While auxin has long been known to be involved in photo- and gravitropisms, new results show that ABA is involved in the movement…

Autophagy is a major pathway involved in degradation and recycling of the cytoplasmic components in a cell. This pathway is functionally well conserved in maintaining cellular homeostasis and modulation of stress responses among yeast, plants and animals. Recent evidence suggests that autophagy targets…

The lack of acceptance of GM-breeding calls for alternative strategies to develop new crop varieties to feed the world's growing population. Moreover, the regulation of novel approaches for genome editing (CRISPR, TALEN) is still unclear and will potentially remain so for the near future (or will likely…

Plant genomes are largely remnants of transposons of varying ages, some of which are presumed to be no longer capable of transposition. Sanchez et al. examined the family of Onsen retrotransposons to determine which members retain activity. They prompted transposition through heat treatment in a mutant…

Peppers are an economically and ecologically important crop plants, but genomic resources are rather scarce. The authors provide here new reference genome sequences for three species of hot pepper (Capsicum baccatum, C. chinense and C. annuum), identifying evolutionary forces that have shaped pepper…

Sex determination in the animal kingdom has been relatively well studied, with two main systems responsible for the sexes in mammals, insects, birds, reptiles and fish; XY and ZW sex-determination. Although much is still unknown about these systems, with many exceptions being discovered to previously…

Potatoes originated in the Andes of southern Peru, and are now the third most important crop for direct human consumption. Hardigan et al. sequenced 67 potato relatives, including South American landraces, North American cultivars and wild-diploid species to learn about the genetics of modern potato’s…