This review, by Tadao Asami, looks back at his career as a scientist who designs and synthesizes small, physiologically active molecules with applications in research and agriculture.  It’s an impressive history documenting how the methods used for such rational design have evolved over the past five…

A major challenge in plant biology is observing molecular events. Reporter systems such as GUS and GFP have underpinned breakthroughs in gene regulation, cell signalling and development, yet each has its constraints: Fluorescent proteins demand microscopes and low background autofluorescence, and GUS…

Designing small-molecule biosensors that are both sensitive and versatile remains a central challenge in synthetic biology, yet such tools are indispensable for environmental monitoring, cellular control, and emerging biotechnologies. In this study, Tian and colleagues exploit an unexpected feature of…

Nitrogen and phosphorus are essential macronutrients for wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) growth and development, and phosphorus deficiency is often associated with purple pigmentation in leaves due to anthocyanin accumulation. For farmers and growers, this pigmentation can be read as a sign of phosphorus…

Elucidating the pathways in which plants can recognize and respond to heat stress is a key step in developing more resilient plants and crops. Work by Li et al. provides a more in-depth understanding of the early factors in heat stress-responsive (HSR) gene expression in Arabidopsis. They first identified…

When we talk of pollination, we often imagine colorful flowers and scents that attract insects to the flowers. However, flowers are a hallmark of angiosperms. How cone-bearing gymnosperms attract their pollinators has been a long-standing question. In a recent study, Valencia-Montoya et al. investigated…

One of the main challenges in plant virology is detecting the active replicase enzyme of positive-strand RNA viruses in living cells, since adding fluorescent tags often prevents it from functioning. A recent study in Plant Physiology by Ishihara et al. has found a way around this problem. The researchers…

Plant pathogens often succeed not by brute force, but by subtly rewiring host developmental programs. Ustilago maydis, the basidiomycete fungus responsible for maize common smut, exemplifies this strategy by inducing tumor-like galls on aerial organs of its host. Although the U. maydis genome encodes…