One of the great dilemmas of science is the fact that nitrogen gas, though very abundant in the atmosphere, is limiting for most forms of life. Of course, this lack of availability is because N2 gas has an extremely strong triple bond holding the two nitrogen atoms together; it’s so strong that N2…

The January 2025 issue of Plant Physiology has a focus on “Hypoxia and Plants”. This field has made a lot of progress recently in understanding plant responses to low oxygen, from the molecular to physiological and developmental levels. The focus issue includes reviews on topics such as divergent…

Special issue: Parasitic plants Runo, Wicke, and Thorogood have edited a special issue of Plants, People, Planet on the topic of parasitic plants. (Note - the Special Issue will be launched on February 19, but the articles are already online in Early View). It’s nice to see a collection…

Photosynthesis is a fundamental biological process for carbon fixation and capturing light energy to drive plant growth. However, excessive sunlight can cause photodamage, which is detrimental to plant health. To protect the photosynthetic machinery from over-excitation and subsequent damage, plant cells…

Cholesterol, an essential structural component of membranes and a precursor for steroid hormones, serves as a key metabolite at the interface of primary and secondary metabolism. However, the mechanisms regulating the balance between its diverse downstream metabolic pathways remain poorly understood.…

Starch is the major storage carbohydrate in plants and is organised into semicrystalline granules. The size, shape, and composition of these granules greatly affects how they are digested, and which industrial applications they are suitable for. Therefore, the enzymes controlling starch synthesis are…

Plants frequently encounter damage during growth and development, necessitating remarkable regenerative abilities to repair damaged tissues. Plants can regenerate organs or even entire plants from callus or a single cell, a capacity underpinning asexual reproduction and various biotechnological applications.…

In this exciting paper, Zhang, Luo, Marand et al. combined several powerful techniques to investigate the program underlying soybean seed development. They used RNA sequencing to profile gene expression from single nuclei (snRNA-seq). They also carried out single-cell sequencing of assays for transposase-accessible…