Category: The Plant Cell: In Brief

The ability to acclimate to high temperatures that are normally lethal is common to virtually all organisms on the planet. A short exposure to milder heat stress informs organisms that they should ready themselves in case they experience even warmer conditions. Acquired thermo-tolerance in plants is…

The ever-increasing amount of data available to researchers has come with similarly increasing cognitive loads in efforts to use these data. Even when data sets are stored in well-curated databases, it can be time-consuming to master the specific tools harbored at each site and cumbersome to move between…

Carbon and nitrogen metabolism are intricately linked in all organisms and are tightly regulated to maintain growth, homeostasis, and other cellular activities. In plants and algae, photosynthesis provides both carbon skeletons and the reductant needed for assimilation of inorganic NO3¯ by nitrate reductase…

The canonical auxin-response pathway in plants begins with auxin sensing by F-box proteins, triggering degradation of AUX/IAA proteins that act as transcriptional repressors via their interaction with sequence-specific DNA-binding AUXIN RESPONSE FACTORS (ARFs; reviewed in Weijers and Wagner, 2016).  Recently,…

During meiosis, recombination between allelic sequences on pairs of homologous chromosomes forms crossovers; these crossovers help make sure that the homologs segregate accurately (reviewed in Zhang et al., 2014). However, cells must suppress recombination between non-allelic sequences, as ectopic recombination…

Ornamental grasses with a sprawling growth habit may be welcome in the garden, but grasses such as maize (Zea mays) give the highest yields when they exhibit upright leaf architecture, allowing them to be planted at high density while maximizing their exposure to sunlight. The maize leaf is composed…

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…