Recent Posts

A Contextualized Catalog: Proteomic analyses of plant CCVs

Dahhan et al. explore the clathrin-coated vesicle proteome in Arabidopsis By Dana A. Dahhan and Sebastian Y. Bednarek, Dept. of Biochemistry, UW-Madison Background: Trafficking of vacuolar and plasma membrane proteins and other macromolecules is essential for plant development, nutrient uptake,…

Homospermidine oxidase catalyzes the formation of a bicyclic ring system as part of the chemical defense of plants

Zakaria and Stegemann et al. identify and characterize an enzyme involved in pyrrolizidine alkaloid biosynthesis in a member of the borage family. Mahmoud M. Zakariaa,b, Thomas Stegemanna,b, Dietrich Obera a Botanical Institute and Botanic Gardens, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany b Department…

Short-term memory of warm daytime in Arabidopsis

Murcia et al. discover how plants store information about daytime temperatures to control stem growth during the night. By Germán Murcia, Cristina Nieto, Romina Sellaro, Salomé Prat, and Jorge J. Casal Background: Plants increase their stature in response to warm temperatures by enhancing stem…

Flowers to Leaves: Bacterial Phyllogen Regulates Host Development

Kitazawa et al. identified a unique proteasome-utilizing mechanism of phyllogen, a bacterial effector protein produced by pathogenic phytoplasmas. Plant Cell. (2022) https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koac062 By Yugo Kitazawa and Kensaku Maejima, Department of Agricultural and Environmental Biology, Graduate…

Plant cells secrete diverse RNA species, including small RNAs, long noncoding RNAs and circular RNAs

Karimi et al. showed that Arabidopsis plants secrete numerous RNAs, which are associated with proteins and are located outside extracellular vesicles. Plant Cell. (2022) https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koac043 By: Hana Zand Karimi and Roger W. Innes, Indiana University Background: To prevent infection…

Uncovering new start sites for plant viral protein synthesis

Chiu et al. characterize hidden viral genes in tomato yellow leaf curl Thailand virus. Background: When viruses such as begomoviruses infect plants, they hijack the host translation machinery to drive the expression of their proteins. This process causes viral disease, leading to great yield losses…

Broad spectrum resistance to fungal pathogens in sorghum is conferred by an immune receptor gene

Lee, Fu et al. discover an unusual immune receptor locus that confers broad-spectrum, strong resistance to fungal pathogens in sorghum. Background: Sorghum, the fifth most widely grown cereal crop globally, provides food security for millions of people. The fungal disease sorghum anthracnose is the…

Nonessential genes are nevertheless good for something: Cold acclimation and photosynthesis

By Yang Gao and Reimo Zoschke, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, Potsdam-Golm, Germany Gao and colleagues dissect how transcription and translation of tobacco chloroplast genes respond to cold exposure and reveal a critical role for the nonessential gene petL. Background: Plants…

An N-terminally truncated NLR is functional

Wu et al. uncover the unexpected role of the truncated NLR NRG1C in negatively regulating plant immunity by antagonizing its full-length NRG1 neighbors. Background: Plants utilize sophisticated innate immune systems to fight against pathogens. Their genomes encode abundant immune receptors to detect…