Recent Posts

High yield and early maturation in rice overexpressing nitrate transporter (Plant Cell)

The application of nitrogen-containing fertilizers is crucial for good yields of crops like rice but also is energy intensive and polluting, so many approaches are being explored to develop plants that are more efficient in their uptake and use of nitrogen. Previous studies identified a crucial role…

High contiguity Arabidopsis thaliana genome assembly with a single nanopore flow cell (Nature Comms)

Every now and then a technology arrives on the scene that suddenly makes everything easier. When I was a student, PCR was developed. More recently, CRISPR/Cas9 applications were developed, and now the hot tool is nanopore flow cell sequencing. The crucial advancement in this method is that rather than…

Systemin receptor SYR1 enhances resistance against herbivorous insects (Nature Plants)

Systemin is the first polypeptide hormone identified in plants, in 1991. Systemin is a small polypeptide hormone that conveys information about insect herbivory systemically (to other tissues). A previous report suggested that the tomato homologue of the brassinosteroid receptor BRI1 serves as a systemin…

Review: The pivotal role of ethylene in plant growth (Trends Plant Sci)

Phytohormones, their ratios and gradients, regulate plant development to allow them to adapt to environment changes.  Ethylene, one such hormone, is produced in response to a multitude of stresses: biotic, osmotic, flooding, drought or even shading by neighbors. Dubois et al. report in this review how…

Ethylene receptors signal via a noncanonical pathway to regulate abscisic acid responses ($) (Plant Physiol.)

The two-carbon containing gaseous hydrocarbon, ethylene, is one of the most important phytohormones. It is perceived by a set of receptors (ETR1, ETR2, ERS, ERS2, EIN4). Bakshi et al. found that ETR1 (etr1-6) and ETR2 (etr2-3) mutants have opposite effects on seed germination in the presence of NaCl,…

Review: New tools and resources in metabolomics: 2016–2017 ($) (Electrophoresis)

Metabolomics, like the other high throughput omics platforms, provides a snapshot of  metabolites in response to a condition or in a cell, tissue, organ, or entire organism. In this review effort the author has cataloged all relevant tools, databases and softwares that were published in 2016-2017 for…

EIN3 and PIF3 form an interdependent module that represses chloroplast development in buried seedlings ($) (Plant Cell)

Photosynthesis is the fundamental process for plants to produce food. Beneath the soil there is an impairment of chloroplast development. In this article, Liu et al. identified that mechanical pressure works through the ethylene-responsive transcription factor EIN3, while light signaling is mediated…

A phosphoinositide map at the shoot apical meristem in Arabidopsis thaliana (BMC Biol.)

Plasma membrane lipids including phosphatidylinositol phosphates (PIPs) are often depicted as forming a featureless plane that serves mainly as a barrier, but in reality they show considerable spatial diversity. PIPs contribute to anchoring and positioning proteins and protein networks, so there is much…

LPCAT1 controls phosphate homeostasis in a zinc-dependent manner (eLIFE)

Phosphate availability is one of the main limiting factors for plant growth. Similarly, zinc deficiency represents a threat for agriculture and children nutrition and there is a complex interaction between phosphate and zinc nutrition. Kisko et al. investigate the interaction of phosphate and zinc nutrition…