Recent Posts

Arabidopsis CHROMATIN REMODELING 19 acts as a transcriptional repressor and contributes to plant pathogen resistance (Plant Cell)

Chromatin remodellers are highly conserved eukaryotic proteins with regulatory roles in various aspects of DNA metabolism including DNA repair, gene expression and mitosis. Here, Kang et al. examine the function of the CHROMATIN REMODELLING19 (CHR19) in Arabidopsis thaliana. Using two T-DNA insertion…

Serendipity: Story of breeding dual resistance (Nature Comms)

How would you feel if you developed a plant that is tolerant to a particular stress stimulus and found out that it can also tolerate another stress? Bettgenhaeuser and found that this happened when plant breeders developed barley varieties resistant to the powdery mildew disease (caused by the fungal…

MAP kinase cascade acts as a hub to decide the ways to fight infection (Sci. Adv.)

Much of our understanding of plant immunity comes from studies of pathogens that infect mesophyll tissues, (e.g., Pseudomonas syringae). However, there are many pathogens that specifically invade vascular tissues (e.g., Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae; Xoo), which causes rice bacterial blight. In a recent…

Ignoring plant science: When you love the plants but not the plant science (Plants People Planet)

Have you ever heard the terms ‘zoochauvinism’, ‘plant blindness’ or ‘plant awareness disparity’? Do you know that in a Twitter poll about 30% of the participants voted plants out of wildlife? Ever noticed how important documentaries like ‘Planet Earth II’ and ‘Our Planet’ prefer animals…

Water-related innovations in land plants evolved by different patterns of gene cooption and novelty (New Phytol)

The availability of genome data from across the kingdom of plants has provided insights into plant evolution, and particularly the emergence of land plants. Here, Bowles et al. explore the genetic origins of three key innovations that supported the expansion of land plants: stomata, vascular tissues,…

Review. Auxin canalization: From speculative models toward molecular players (Curr Opin Plant Biol)

The versatility of roles that the hormone auxin plays led Paque and Weijers to suggest a new meaning to the acronym IAA (originally- Indole Acetic Acid)- ‘Influences Almost Anything’. It is known that PIN-FORMED (PIN) auxin exporters are responsible for cell-to-cell directional auxin flow and auxin…

Review. The complex zigzagging in the plant immune system (Plant Cell)

I remember when I joined my PhD lab, the first article I was recommanded was a review by Jones and Dangl (2006) titled “The plant immune system”. Even today it remains the first article given to newbies in the lab. But the field has progressed way ahead in the more than fifteen years since that article…

Review: Embryo-endosperm interactions ($) (Annu Rev Plant Biol)

Angiosperm seed formation is an incredibly complex process, considering that it requires coordinating the development of three distinct structures –the embryo, the endosperm and the seed coat– in a small space. However, Doll and Ingram show us that angiosperms faced this challenge by evolving a complex…

Flavodiiron proteins enhance the rate of CO2 assimilation in Arabidopsis under fluctuating light intensity (Plant Physiol)

Plants must adjust to varying levels of light in order to optimize photosynthetic rates; too little electron transport and plants will incur an energetic penalty, while excessive excitation of photosystem I leads to photodamage. During high light conditions, the increase in DpH acts as a brake on electron…