A lot of effort goes into making a flower. Suites of genes must function in the right place at the right time. If not, stamens might grow where sepals should be, and so on, yielding homeotic mutant flowers. In general, flower parts are arranged in four concentric whorls of organs, including (from outside…

Isoprenoids are a huge group of compounds that include primary metabolites such as carotenoids, chlorophylls, and hormones, as well as a plethora of specialized secondary metabolites. In addition to their importance in the physiology of plants (and of other kingdoms of life), isoprenoids have drawn attention…

MacGregor-Chatwin et al. map the cellular organization of photosynthetic protein complexes http://www.plantcell.org/content/29/5/1119 Life on Earth depends on photosynthesis, the source of all of our food, oxygen, and most of our energy. Two pigment-protein complexes called Photosystems I and II…

Tsuda et al. explore the function of BLH transcription factors in maize meristems Plants have specialized tissues at the tips of roots and shoots called meristems. Meristem cells are what keep the plant growing; they are undifferentiated cells that continue to divide, providing new cells for growth.…

Xiong et al. explore the action of plant hormones that control how rice seedlings emerge from the soil http://www.plantcell.org/content/29/5/1053 By Qing Xiong, Bao Ma, and Lu Xiang Flowering plants begin their life cycle as a seed beneath the soil surface. With adequate water and the right temperature,…

Cañas et al. study the relationships between maize leaf metabolism and grain yield to identify putative markers for breeding http://www.plantcell.org/content/29/5/919 By Rafael A. Cañas, Peter J. Lea and Bertrand Hirel In crops, several metabolic pathways are involved in the control of biomass…

Keiko Sugimoto, an Editor of The Plant Cell, was recently profiled by her undergraduate institution. Read more about The Plant Cell Editorial Board here. "At the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science, the research team I lead as a Principal Investigator (PI) focuses on the two themes of…

Magdalena is a Reviewing Editor for The Plant Cell and a Professor at UMass Amherst. Here she describes her research interests in a series of videos published by iBiology.  A set of three video lectures, published by iBiology on May 2, 2017 Part 1: Understanding cell shape: Big insights from…