A beam of sunlight sends Chlamydomonas reinhardtii scrambling. This tiny, biflagellate alga senses light with its eyespot and adjusts its movements accordingly, depending on photosynthetic needs. In the eyespot, a membranous structure of reddish, carotenoid-filled granules that reflect light and two…

Fans of the television show The Magic Schoolbus might remember that the teacher/heroine, Ms. Frizzle used to tell her students “Your job, as scientists, is to look for connections!” Ms. Frizzle would love the Mos4-associated Complex (MAC), because MAC has connections all over the place. Indeed, research…

Vera Gorelova is the featured first author of Dihydrofolate Reductase/Thymidylate Synthase Fine-tunes the Folate Status and Controls Redox Homeostasis. Current Position: PhD candidate at Ghent University looking for a new challenge Education: MSc. In Biology, Novosibirsk State University, Russia Non-scientific…

Rene Schneider, featured first author of Two Complementary Mechanisms Underpin Cell Wall Patterning during Xylem Vessel Development Current Position: Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Education: PhD (2013) Bio-Physics, Dresden University of Technology,…

Plant growth and development are extremely adaptable to changes in the external environment, including nutrient status, light quality and intensity, and temperature. Thanks to their developmental plasticity, plants can also initiate new organs from differentiated tissue following wounding, to the benefit…

The energetically costly tendency of the carbon fixing enzyme RuBisCO to, every now and then, fix oxygen instead of carbon dioxide has led to the evolution of various carbon concentrating mechanisms in plants and algae. One such mechanism, Crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM), involves primary CO2 fixation…

Aphids are highly destructive insect pests—in addition to robbing plants of sugar-rich phloem sap, they carry viruses that can be deadly to the plant. To reach the phloem sap, aphids must penetrate the plasma membrane of sieve elements. Mature sieve elements, which are virtually empty, translocate…

A hallmark of xylem development is the deposition of secondary cell wall material in specific patterns (reviewed in Patrick et al, 2007). These cell wall deposits structurally reinforce the xylem to withstand negative pressure during water transport and differ in different xylem cell types. While it…