Plants rely on microbes to aid their uptake of nutrients. Most plants from an intimate association with mycorrhizal fungi, in which both partners benefit through the exchange of nutrients and photosynthate. In the most common form, arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis, the fungus forms branched structures…

Withania somnifera (ashwagandha) is popularly known for its most prominent bioactive compound called withanolide. This natural product has enormous medicinal potential and has traditionally been used in the Indian Ayurvedic system for more than 3000 years to treat various illnesses. However, the industrial…

No other alkaloid has received as much scientific attention as nicotine. For better or for worse, tobacco has been used by humans for at least 12,000 years, yet the final steps of nicotine biosynthesis have remained stubbornly unresolved until now. A new paper in Cell by Chang et al. (2026) reveals that…

The totipotency of plant tissues makes them very amenable to propagation through somatic tissues. Tissue culture propagation is used to regenerate gene edited plants from single cells and to cultivate plants that are difficult to propagate sexually. In a recent paper, Davis et al. investigated the genomic…

Some species are more studied than others, and it is common to assume that what happens in a model plant like Arabidopsis applies to all other plant species. This is far from true. Recently, Cheng et al. explored stomatal development in the CAM succulent Kalanchoë laxiflora. Stomata are epidermal pores…

Wood is a major source of biomass on Earth and is valuable feedstock for multiple industries. Wood formation includes vascular cambium cell division and the maturation of the resulting stem-differentiating xylem (SDX) cells into mature xylem. Zhao et al. furthers our understanding of these processes…

Community and ecosystem ecology are the main pillars of agroecology. Plants exude various chemicals from their roots to communicate with  belowground microorganisms to boost productivity. This article by Urcelay et al. offers a new perspective to understand the interaction between plants and arbuscular…

Although calcium ions are universal second messengers, plants employ both conserved and unique strategies to decode Ca²⁺ signals. In a new review in Cell, Sheng Luan reviews the molecular tools used to study calcium signaling in plants and the mechanisms that govern this process. Like other cells,…