Some proteins are put to work in more than one job, in a form of evolutionary improvization. They are often described as "moonlighting" proteins, referring to the practice of people taking a second job, typically after dark, to help pay the bills.  A classic example of a moonlighting protein is the…

By Alex Harkess and Margaret Frank While working on very small RNA molecules, Blake Meyers tackles some of the biggest problems in plant biology. Blake has spent much of his academic career generating and sifting through billions of sequence reads to ask a deceptively simple question: what do small…

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., June 15, 2018 - For decades, biologists have believed a key enzyme in plants had one function--produce amino acids, which are vital to plant survival and also essential to human diets. But for Wellington Muchero, Meng Xie and their colleagues, this enzyme does more than advertised.…

Plants in temperate regions experience near-freezing temperatures that allow them to develop a cold response prior to freezing. This cold acclimation process involves changes to chromatin structure, transcription, RNA processing, translation, post-translational modifications and protein stability. Genome-wide…

Humans have domesticated crops for thousand of years by artificially selecting plants for numerous traits including morphology, lower toxicity or higher yield. As a result, plant domestication often altered plant fitness and resistance to stress under controlled conditions (Meyer & Purugganan 2013).…

Nutrients are rarely distributed homogenously in soil. Consequently, plants have local and long-distance signaling systems in place to monitor and coordinate both demand and supply of essential macronutrients such as nitrogen (N). The “N-demand” long distance signal emanates from a section of the…

How often does evolution repeat itself? When the same evolutionary strategy arises multiple times, how often are these strategies built on the same genetic foundations? Addressing this question allows us to understand the relative roles of constraint and contingency in the history of life, but (without…

Shoji Segami, first author of Vacuolar H+-pyrophosphatase and Cytosolic Soluble Pyrophosphatases Cooperatively Regulate Pyrophosphate Levels in Arabidopsis thaliana Current Position: Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Bioagricultural Sciences, Nagoya University, Japan Education: PhD, Graduate…