Recent Posts

Chlamydomonas genomics: no longer going it alone

By Rory J. Craig, Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh  Craig and colleagues report the sequencing and gene annotations of close and more distant relative of the unicellular alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, an emerging model organism for plant biology.  Background: The single-cell…

Chlamydomonas keeps the rhythm going

By Patrice Salomé, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA  Salomé and Merchant analyze hundreds of RNA-seq samples in the single-cell green alga and discover vast co-expression potential and surprising residual synchronized expression across samples derived from cultures…

The final (algal) frontier: Chlamydomonas enters the age of single cell RNA-seq

Ma, Salomé and colleagues use single cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) on the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as a proof-of-concept for the application of this method to unicellular algae.  By Patrice A. Salomé, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UCLA* Background: The sequenced…

Coevolving Chloroplast Proteins

By ES Forsythe, AM Williams, DB Sloan, Department of Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado Forsythe and colleagues measured the rate of variation across thousands of nucleus-encoded and plastid-encoded proteins to then look for evidence of coevolution, suggestive of similar functions…

Pharus genome provides insights into grass evolution

Ma et al. provide numerous insights into how whole-genome duplication contributed to the origin and diversification of the grass family. By Peng-Fei Ma, Yun-Long Liu and De-Zhu Li (Kunming Institute of Botany, CAS) Background: Whole genome duplication (WGD), which may result from an organism…

Highly Diverse Plant Immune Receptors Form a Species-wide Reservoir of New Recognition Specificities

Prigozhin and Krasileva identify highly variable NLR subfamilies responsible for the generation of new immune receptor specificities. The Plant Cell (2021)   By Daniil M. Prigozhin1 and Ksenia V. Krasileva2 1Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 2University of California Berkeley  Background:…

A Light-Adapted Charge-Separated State for PSII

Sipka and coworkers show that the closed state of photosystem II holds a formerly unrecognized structural and functional plasticity and upon illumination assumes a light-adapted charge-separated state. [Plant Cell https://academic.oup.com/plcell/advance-article/doi/10.1093/plcell/koab008/6119330] By…

A SWEET route for phloem loading in maize

Bezrutczyk et al. use single cell RNA-seq to show that SWEET13 proteins in maize bundle sheath cells are specialized in nutrient transport to the phloem. Plant Cell. https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koaa055. By Margaret Bezrutczyk and Wolf B. Frommer, Institute for Molecular Physiology, Heinrich-Heine-University…

Aluminum Toxicity and Phosphate Deficiency: One Compound to Rule Them All

Wei et al. explore how aluminum toxicity and inorganic phosphate limitation inhibit plant growth. Pengliang Weia,b and Lieven De Veyldera,b aDepartment of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Ghent University, Ghent, B-9052, Belgium bCenter for Plant Systems Biology, VIB, Ghent, B-9052, Belgium Background:…