Recent Posts

RAF2 is a Rubisco Assembly Factor in Arabidopsis thaliana

The assembly of the carbon fixing enzyme Rubisco is a complex process and involves many chaperones including RAF1, RbcX and the chaperonins. Recent evidence pointed to the existence of another chaperone, RAF2, conserved among photosynthetic organisms. The protein has similarity to pterin-4α-carbinolamine…

Review. The coming of age of EvoMPMI: evolutionary molecular plant-microbe interactions across multiple timescales

Often, a wide gap exists between evolutionary research, that is focused on theoretical approaches and organism evolution across multiple timescales, and molecular research aspiring to solve mechanistic puzzles of how particular systems work. Plant Biology is no exception to this, and much can be learnt…

Opinion: Plant pathogen effector proteins as manipulators of host microbiomes? (Mol Plant)

To understand disease development, effector research has mainly focused on the direct interaction of pathogen-derived molecules with plant host targets, or their sensing by surface or intracellular receptors. Recently, attention has turned to the plant microbiome and its key role in maintaining plant…

Knock-down of rice microRNA166 confers drought resistance through changes in leaf morphology (Plant Physiol.)

Under drought conditions, moderate leaf rolling improves yield in rice by reducing water loss and allowing efficient photosynthesis (leaf upright position). In STTM166 transgenic rice plants,  miRNA166 is knocked down (STTM means "short tandem target mimic") and the plants constitutively exhibit the…

Review. Use it or average it: Stochasticity in plant development (Curr. Opin. Plant Biol.)

In this interesting review, Roeder describes the importance of stochasticity in plant development. She starts off with an explanation: “A process that can be analyzed statistically but not predicted precisely is stochastic. Stochasticity does not imply the absence of regulation, just that the regulation…

Review. Rhizobia: From saprophytes to endosymbionts (Nat. Rev. Microbiol.) ($)

One of the best characterized plant-bacteria interactions is that between legumes and rhizobia. This review by Poole et al. explores rhizobia in their non-plant associated state (as saprophytes that derive energy and nutrients from organic matter in the soil), through the complex signals that lead to…

Control of retrograde signaling by rapid turnover of GENOMES UNCOUPLED 1 (Plant Physiol.)

Communication between chloroplast and the nucleus is crucial to accomodate changes in the environment as well as regulate development of the chloroplast itself. Five GENOMES UNCOUPLED (GUN2 to -6) genes were previously described to regulate plastid-to-nucleus communication by affecting the synthesis…

Single Parent Expression (SPE) of non-syntenic genes in maize hybrids (Curr. Biol.) ($)

In maize, it has long been known that the crossing of two inbred lines can produce a hybrid offspring with higher yield than the parents. Baldauf and collaborators have studied the gene expression of 6 hybrid lines coming from 7 distantly related inbred lines. One line, B73, was chosen as the common…

Asymmetric auxin distribution and root tropisms (Plant Cell Physiol.) ($)

The asymmetric distribution of the phytohormone auxin is essential for tropic responses of seed plants but it is unclear if this distribution is essential for root negative phototropism as well. To understand the role of auxin distribution in root negative phototropism in Arabidopsis, Kimura and colleagues…