When animals are stressed by unfavorable environmental conditions, they will typically move to a more favorable location to reduce that stress. Unfortunately for plants, they are quite literally rooted to the ground and thus must manage the stress where they stand. In order to deal with adverse environmental…

Legumes associate with beneficial soil bacteria called rhizobia to acquire plant-usable ammonia in a process called root nodule symbiosis (RNS). This association is so valuable for nitrogen starved legumes that they form specialized new organs to house them. These de novo organs, called nodules, develop…

Although a vineyard full of decaying grapes infected with noble rot is a blessing for sweet wine producers, the causal agent, Botrytis cinerea (gray mold), causes huge crop losses. Unlike most plant pathogens, individual isolates of the necrotrophic fungus can infect an extremely broad range of plants,…

To optimize their fitness in the field, plants need to respond rapidly, specifically and dynamically to an ever-changing and often hostile environment. By integrating external environmental cues with endogenous developmental programs, phytohormones play a critical role in the cross-talk between signal…

Invasion of plant tissues by pathogens is well known to activate localized reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and cell death.  However, the sources of ROS production and their role in triggering cell death are enigmatic. A recent study by Dangol et al. (2018) shows that, in rice (Oryza sativa),…

Plants need to strike a fine balance between the production, transport, and degradation of stress signals in order to optimize growth in fluctuating environmental conditions. The signal 3’phosphoadenosine 5’phosphate (PAP) accumulates during drought and light stress and induces stress-responsive…

Abiotic stresses constitute a global threat to agricultural crop production and natural ecosystems. One of the most prominent abiotic stresses is drought, which dramatically alters plant physiology and morphology. Studies in model organisms have shed light into how plants respond to drought stress, including…

Of all plant behaviors, ectopic embryogenesis (reviewed in Radoeva and Weijers, 2014) might be one of the coolest. Zygotic embryogenesis begins with fertilization, followed by an asymmetric cell division that generates two cells with distinct fates. The small apical cell gives rise to the pro-embryo,…