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Spotlight: The role of fossils for reconstructing the evolution of plant development I suspect if we asked someone to describe a fossil we’d hear a lot about dinosaur bones. Certainly, science museums are full of fossilized animal remains, which have greatly informed our understanding of animal…

Virtual issue: The chemical language of plant–microbe–microbe associations Don’t miss this exciting Virtual Issue from New Phytologist on “plant-microbe-microbe” interactions. That’s not a typo – many of the articles address the signals that coordinate such multi-factorial interactions,…

Review: Molecular concepts to explain heterosis in crops Heterosis, the phenomenon where hybrid plants outperform their genetically distinct parents, is a cornerstone of modern agriculture. This review by Hochholdinger and Yu explores the molecular mechanisms behind heterosis. The review traces the…

Review: Guidelines for studying and naming plant plasma-membrane domains Numerous studies have highlighted the critical importance of plasma membrane heterogeneities in regulating cell functions, leading to a proliferation of overlapping and contradictory terminologies. Here, Jaillais and others in…

Review. Chilling out: How plants remodel membranes to survive the cold Low temperatures disrupt cellular processes and require metabolic adaptation. Cold-induced lipid remodeling helps maintain membrane permeability and prevents phase separations that can lead to cellular damage. In this review, Shomo,…

Review. Lighting the way: Compelling open questions in photosynthesis research Photosynthesis is fundamental to life on Earth and a topic that all plant biologists should have a good understanding of, but it is also an incredibly complex set of processes, reactions and structures spanning great temporal…

Review: Stem cells of the vascular cambium Vascular cambium cells are meristematic cells responsible for secondary growth. Lineage tracing studies in Arabidopsis and poplar show the presence of single bifacial stem cells in each radial cell file that produce xylem inwards and phloem cells outwards.…

Review: Root development and symbiosis: an epigenetic perspective Roots do not grow in isolation but occupy a space inhabited by a variety of organisms. With certain fungi and bacteria, they form partnerships or symbiotic relationships that increase the plant’s nutrient uptake and assimilation.…

Review: Deep learning approaches to understanding stomatal function Sydney Brenner famously said, “Progress in science depends on new techniques, new discoveries and new ideas, probably in that order." Right now, we’re seeing how advancements and new techniques in artificial intelligence and deep…

Review: Strategies to improve photosynthesis Photosynthesis is the process by which plants assimilate carbon by using light energy. However, with the solar energy conversion efficiency of many crop plants less than 1%, it is inefficient. Therefore, there is interest in manipulating photosynthesis…

Review. Revisiting plant electric signaling: Challenging an old phenomenon with new discoveries In the electrifying world of plant signaling, a paradigm shift is underway as researchers dig into the intricate mechanisms of action potentials (APs) and slow wave potentials (SWPs). Departing from conventional…

Review: The plant immune system: From discovery to deployment A review of the past 50 years of plant immunity by Jones, Staskawicz, and Dangl? Yes please! I particularly enjoy historical perspectives of a discipline, as they frame conceptual breakthroughs with the benefit of hindsight. As the article…

Review: Chloroplast ion homeostasis Healthy plants require access to several mineral nutrients, which are usually taken up in ionic form. The details of nutrient uptake, distribution, and function have been painstakingly revealed over several decades. In this excellent new Tansley Review, Kunz et…

Review. Chloroplast ATP synthase: From structure to engineering I remember how amazed I was the first time I saw an animation of ATP synthase doing its job. This fantastic engine is largely conserved across the domains of life, with some variation as highlighted in this review of the chloroplast…

Review: Synthetic algal genomes As photosynthetic organisms, algae can harness solar energy to do useful things, from environmental cleanup to producing fuels and other beneficial molecules. This review by Goold et al. provides an overview of how algae can be valuable platforms for synthetic biology…

Review: SynBio takes on roots and the rhizosphere This is an excellent introduction to how synthetic biology can be used to program plants for climate resilience by engineering them to respond predictably and in ways beyond those that evolution has explored, through the use of controllable synthetic…

Review: Integrating cellular electron microscopy with multimodal data to explore biology across space and time Fifty years ago (1974), Albert Claude, Christian de Duve, and George Palade were awarded the Nobel Prize for their discoveries on the structural and functional organization of the cell, which…

Review: A century of studying plant secondary metabolism—From “what?” to “where, how, and why?”  Phytochemicals, also known as plant secondary metabolites, play primary roles in plant development, structure, and response to the environment. Their metabolism has been studied for over a century.…

Review. Milestones in understanding phosphorus uptake, transport, sensing, use, and signaling Phosphorus (P) is an essential nutrient and critical component of nucleic acids, phospholipids, and other molecules. Yang et al. provide a historical (since 1996) overview of the processes controlling its…

Special issue: Human-machine collaboration in plant biology This is an excellent article to wrap up this year and lead us into the future. Introducing a special issue of Plant Cell Physiology, Nakajima et al. summarize an exciting collection of papers that look at diverse ways that plant biology can…

Review: Paternal imprinting in Marchantia polymorpha Humans and flowering plants spend most of their lives in a diploid state with two copies of each chromosome in most cells, but to reproduce they produce haploid gametes through meiosis. By contrast, bryophytes (liverworts, hornworts, and mosses),…

Review: Till death do us pair: Co-evolution of plant–necrotroph interactions This interesting and well-written review by Derbyshire and Raffaele takes a step back from the molecular interactions between plant and pathogen and discusses them in light of co-evolutionary processes. The review starts…

Review: Rapid auxin signaling: Unknowns old and new You might think you’ve read enough about auxin, but I recommend you take this opportunity to read one more article, this very interesting and enjoyable review by Fielder and Friml. Auxin has figured prominently in both the classical and molecular…

Review: Red macroalgae in the genomic era I highly recommend this excellent and accessible article by Borg et al. that provides an overview of the red macroalgae, which “may have been the first eukaryotic lineage to have evolved complex multicellularity”. It’s full of fascinating information:…

Perspective: How flower development genes were identified using forward genetic screens in Arabidopsis thaliana If you weren’t around in the '80s, you missed some great times; the music, the fashion, the flower genetics! This historical perspective article by David Smythe nicely sums up those heady…

Review: Strigolactones integrate metabolic and nutritional signals Strigolactones are a class of hormones first identified in the 1960s as components of root exudates that promote germination of parasitic Striga seeds, and later as a promoter of associations with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Strigolactones…

Focus Issue: Biomolecular Condensates Although The Plant Cell Focus Issue on Biomolecular Condensates officially comes out in September, due to the idiosyncrasies of publishing many of the articles are already available online, and I'm highlighting them now because this topic is also the focus of…

Review. CRISPR/Cas-mediated plant genome editing: Outstanding challenges a decade after implementation I’ll be honest, I was surprised to see “a decade after implementation” in this title, but indeed, the first publication describing CRISPR/Cas in plants was in 2013. We’ve learned a lot in…

Essay: The coming golden age of lichen biology Lichens are remarkable, complex symbiotic organisms. They have evolved multiple times independently, but all lichen include at least one fungal partner (the mycobiont) which they usually resemble morphologically, and at least one cyanobacterial or algal…

Review: Stress-related biomolecular condensates in plants Biomolecular condensates are non-membrane-bound compartments containing proteins and RNAs with key functions in stress responses. In plants, they occur as several types with different properties and components, including stress granules and…

Review: Climate change impacts on plant pathogens, food security, and paths forward Much of what is written about the impacts of climate change on food production is focused on the abiotic stresses that plants will experience, but biotic stresses will be equally impactful, as discussed in this fine…

Review: Resolving metabolic interaction mechanisms in plant microbiomes Life is spurred forward by the power of metabolic interactions. Within the plant microbiome, microbial communities use diverse mechanisms to thrive, survive, and multiply. In this review, Pacheco & Vorholt describe the interplay…

Review: Proximity labeling in plants Genetic studies can suggest that two proteins function in the same pathway, but how can we figure out if they share the same space? In this review, Xu et al. provide an overview of proximity labeling, a method to identify proteins that co-localize in space. Proximity…

Special feature: Harnessing crop diversity Don’t miss this excellent set of articles on the topic of crop diversity, organized by Susan McCouch, Loren Rieseberg, with Pamela Ronald. It includes five perspectives and six research articles, on topics such as breeding technologies and international…

Review: Salt-tolerant crops: Time to deliver Few topics are as inherently interesting from both fundamental and applied perspectives as salt tolerance in crop plants. From the basic science side, cells have several strategies that they use to keep Na+ levels low in their cytosol in spite of what can…

Review: Photorespiration is the solution, not the problem Rubisco (ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase) is one of a kind, simultaneously recognized as one of the most abundant and important enzymes, and also widely characterized as flawed because it uses both O2 and CO2 as substrates,…

Review: Hypes, hopes, and the way forward for microalgal biotechnology Microalgae are small, photosynthetic algae that have emerged as important contributors to food and nutrient production. This review describes the many ways they can be grown (e.g., autotrophic, with sunlight or artificial light;…

Running a research group in the next generation: Combining sustainable and reproducible research with values-driven leadership This is a fantastic article to help new, future, and even current lab heads think about their postures, priorities, and practices. It was developed through a workshop held…

An RNA world Annual Reviews editions typically start with a brief autobiographical essay by a noted scientist. The 2023 edition of Annual Reviews in Plant Biology includes a profile of David Baulcombe, the well-known scientist whose work was foundational in revealing the roles of small RNAs in gene…

Review: The epigenetic control of the transposable element life cycle in plant genomes and beyond What a wonderful review! As the title indicates, this review by Liu et al. looks at transposons, considering their “life cycle” – from introduction into a naïve genome, through amplification, diversification,…

Review: The power and perils of de novo domestication using gene editing I’m excited by the ways that knowledge about plant developmental and metabolic programs is being used to make new varieties of plants. This excellent review describes some of these applications such as changes in fruit size…

Strategies on how to maximize the moment as a junior faculty On the academic job hunt? Bookmark this article, which provides valuable information about what to do when your search is successful. The time between getting an offer and accepting it is the most critical time for you to negotiate to get…

Update: Plant energy expenses: How to stretch the C budget Balancing the books means making sure that expenses don’t exceed income. In terms of a plant’s energy budget, most of the input comes from carbon fixed during photosynthesis. The output is much more diverse. Some fixed carbon is used for…

Update: Toward a data infrastructure for the Plant Cell Atlas The ability to analyze the information contained within a single cell, for example through single-cell RNA sequening (scRNA-seq) presents exciting possibilities to biologists. Building on this and similar technologies, the Plant Cell Atlas…

Genome-edited rice deficient in two 4-COUMARATE:COENZYME A LIGASE genes displays diverse lignin alterations Lignin is one of the most important end-products of the cinnamate/monolignol pathway and it is abundant in the secondary cell wall of vascular plants. In grasses, lignins are derived from monolignols,…

Science special issue on Grasses “Grassy biomes—from the steppes of Mongolia to the savannas of Tanzania— are predicted to be the ecosystems hardest hit by the ongoing climate and land use crises,” begins a Perspective by Strömberg and Staver in the August 4, 2022 Science special issue on…

A robust mechanism for resetting juvenility during each generation in Arabidopsis Proper development requires an aging program that is regulated throughout the entire lifespan of an organism as well as across generations. In plants, reproductive cells are derived from differentiated cells, and thus…

Review: Root cell types as an interface for biotic interactions Kawa and Brady review the contributions and responses of individual cell types and cell identities in plant biotic interactions, both pathogenic and commensal. The first step in these interactions is the perception of the microbes by…

Circadian clock component CCA1 is a transcriptional regulator of ABA-mediated abiotic stress tolerance in rice In rice, the circadian clock component gene Circadian Clock Associated 1 (OsCCA1) regulates flowering and nitrogen use efficiency. CCA1 is a MYB family transcription factor that follows a…

Review: Molecular regulators of nitrate response in plants Nitrate is the major form of nitrogen used by plants in an aerobic crop cultivation scenario. Lamig et al. review recent additions to the already vast knowledge of nitrate signaling. A first line of regulation concerns nitrate uptake through…

Systematic characterization of gene function in the photosynthetic alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii The green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a useful model system to study photosynthetic organisms, as this single-celled species allows for more high-throughput methods than in multicellular plants,…

Review: Protein phosphorylation “toggle switch” for plant iron balance Protein phosphorylation and dephosphorylation act as a switch regulating a multitude of protein properties, be it their activity, interaction with other proteins, stability, or even cellular localization. This review by Li…

Review: Fire-released seed dormancy - a global synthesis In 1991, Jon E. Keely wrote the first review about the role of fire as a dormancy-breaking cue in California's Mediterranean ecosystems. In this review, almost 30 years after Keely's work, Pausas and Lamont provide us with an updated and worldwide…

Special issue: Sex determination and sex chromosome evolution in land plants, Philosophical Transactions B At some point, most biology students learn the term “dioecy” (two houses), which refers to the separation of male and female function into different individuals, a characteristic that is…

Chloroplast protein import determines plant proteostasis and retrograde signaling The neurological condition Huntington’s disease is caused by mutated versions of the Huntingtin gene that encode expanded stretches of polyglutamine repeats, resulting in protein aggregation. However, despite the widespread…

Review: A rulebook for peptide control of legume–microbe endosymbiosis Symbiotic associations with bacterial or fungal partners enhance nutrient uptake for most plants, and recent years have uncovered the very sophisticated means by which these associations are established and controlled. Peptides…

Review. Auxin canalization: From speculative models toward molecular players 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…

Carbon flux through photosynthesis and central carbon metabolism show distinct patterns between algae, C3, and C4 plants Photosynthesis is an attractive target for improving crop yields, and tailoring downstream photosynthesis-associated metabolism is a relatively unexplored path for achieving this.…

Review: The great diversity in kinds of seed dormancy: a revision of the Nikolaeva–Baskin classification system for primary seed dormancy ($) In 1967, Marianna G. Nikolaeva presented the first detailed system to classify seed dormancy based on its causes and the conditions required to break it.…

TT2 controls rice thermotolerance through SCT1-dependent alteration of wax biosynthesis Global warming severely affects agricultural harvests, risking food security. To deal with heat stress, plants show different strategies. Indeed, heat increases intracellular Ca2+ levels to activate a heat shock…

Happy New Year! Welcome to our latest edition of Plant Science Research Weekly, featuring contributions from several of our new cohort of Plantae Fellows, who will be helping us keep up with exciting developments in plant sciences. Enjoy! The evolutionary advantage of losing genes after endosymbiosis The…

Review. Chloroplast development in green plant tissues: The interplay between light, hormones, and transcriptional regulation Chloroplasts are indispensable for plant growth and physiological performance; not only for photosynthesis but also for many biochemical processes. Due to the endosymbiont…

Focus Issue on Architecture and Plasticity The November issue of Plant Physiology is a Focus Issue on Architecture and Plasticity. One of the most intriguing aspects of plant growth and development is the environmental responsiveness (also known as “plasticity”) of plant architecture (growth form).…

Special Issue of J. Exp. Bot. The quiescent center and root apical meristem: Organization and function As the name suggests, the root quiescent center (QC) is an area at the root tip of low cell-division activity. This special issue of the Journal of Experimental Botany provides a comprehensive overview…

Review: 3D electron microscopy for imaging organelles in plants and algae Have you noticed that the quality and resolution of cell images has been getting better and better? Weiner et al. review the recent advances in 3D electron microscopy (EM) technologies that have provided these strikingly beautiful…

Review: Fifteen compelling open questions in plant cell biology As part of The Plant Cell’s upcoming celebration of plant cell biology, Roeder et al. write about fifteen of the “open questions” in the field. This, and the other reviews that make up the focus issue, provide valuable insights…

Review: Root plasticity under abiotic stress For millennia, humans have selected desirable traits in the above-ground part of plants, but below-ground traits have been only indirectly selected. Thus, roots are ripe for optimization, and hold particular promise in efforts to make crops more resilient…

Review: Alternative splicing as conserved mechanism to regulate CDPKs? ($) Calcium-dependent protein kinases (CDPKs/CPKs) are an interesting class of proteins present in plants, algae and some protists that are thought to “sense” and “respond” to spikes in intracellular Ca2+ signaling events.…

A Central Role for Genetics in Plant Biology Plant biology as a field of study encompasses a rich plethora of subjects, some of which themselves are their own fields. Maarten Koornneef, in this memoir-style article, describes how genetics in particular shaped his career that saw the rise of Arabidopsis…

Review: Convergent evolution of gene regulatory networks underlying plant adaptations The transition from aquatic to terrestrial habitats exposed plants to low water availability, high light, radiation, and other environmental challenges. To overcome these challenges, plants developed morpho-physiological…

Review. Message in a Bubble: Shuttling small RNAs and proteins between cells and interacting organisms using extracellular vesicles Small RNAs have big effects and can serve to shut down or silence gene expression. Recently, studies have found that small RNAs can contribute to plant defense beyond…

Review: Functional morphology of plants - a key to biomimetic applications Humans have derived inspiration from innumerable corners of the natural world. Plants of diverse forms have inspired many “biomimetics,” or technical products derived from biological models. Speck and Speck review how plant-based…

Focus Issue: Focus on the Biology of Plant Genomes The Plant Cell has published a Focus Issue on the Biology of Plant Genomes. This Focus Issue includes reviews and research articles that highlight some of the most important recent advances in plant genomics and foreshadow future discoveries. Although…

Review. Under siege: virus control in plant meristems and progeny Perhaps, when our lives have been turned upside down by a human pathogenic virus, it’s easy to overlook the fact that plants too suffer from viral infections; but of course, they do. (And of course, famously, viruses were first discovered…

Review: Recent discoveries show novel sensors and regulation of reactive oxygen species Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) are produced as metabolic byproducts and are vital participants in development and stress responses. However, ROS can be damaging, and are subcellularly localized to mitigate toxicity.…

Review: Ageing beautifully: can the benefits of seed priming be separated from a reduced lifespan trade-off? Seed priming is a family of presowing techniques that control water uptake in seeds, so they are dehydrated once metabolic activities have restarted but before the end of germination. Primed…

Review: CRISPR screens in plants: Approaches, guidelines, and future prospects We don’t need to remind you of the tremendous positive impact that CRISPR-based technologies have had on the life sciences through enabling any gene to be edited precisely. Here, Gaillochet et al. provide an up-to-date…

Update: Lateral root formation and nutrients: nitrogen in the spotlight We marvel at the ability of starfish to regenerate an arm, or a lizard a new tail, but even more impressive than these feats is the ability of a plant root system to create lateral roots when and where they are needed. This root…

Review: Microbiota-root-shoot-environment axis and stress tolerance in plants ($) Roots and shoots exist in different environments and have different functions, but each depends on the actions of the other. In recent years, many factors have been identified that move from root to shoot or vice versa…

Review: Can smart nutrient applications optimize the plant's hidden half to improve drought resistance? The root system has three key functions: support/anchoring, uptake of water, and uptake of nutrients. Many questions remain about how roots integrate all of these functions into the architecture…

Review: Perspectives on improving light distribution and light use efficiency in crop canopies Light comes largely from above, and plants have evolved strategies to efficiently capture this light even when competing with other potentially shading plants. However, at a field-level, such competition…

Review: Plant evolution driven by interactions with symbiotic and pathogenic microbes One of the great questions in plant science has been, “How do plants recognize friend from foe?” Like most great questions, this one benefits from a historical perspective. In their new review, Delaux and Schornack…

Review: Time to wake up: Epigenetic and small-RNA-mediated regulation during seed germination Seed germination is a crucial step in plants' life cycle and has critical implications in ecological and agronomic contexts. Therefore, there has been an increasing interest in understanding the mechanisms…

Review: On tree longevity Everyone enjoys hearing about ancient trees that have been alive since various events in human history, but did you ever stop to wonder why some trees live for millennia and others don’t? If so, you’ll want to read this Tansley Review by Piovesan and Biondi. One of their…

Review: Age is NOT just a number Aging of plants is marked by the growth and differentiation of individual organs, as well as transitions of the whole plant through developmental phases: juvenile, vegetative adult, and reproductive phase. In their recent review, Rankenberg et al. discuss how abiotic…

Review: Selective redox signaling shapes plant-pathogen interactions Reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS) are often presented as something of enigmas. They are damaging by-products of metabolism and stress, but also intentionally produced as a signal and defense response…

Review: Molecular mechanisms involved in functional macroevolution of plant transcription factors Transcription factors (TFs) are very important actors through which evolution can operate. In every organism and system studied, starting with the seminal work of Jacob and Monod, they’ve been shown…

Horizontal genome transfer by cell-to-cell travel of whole organelles Textbooks tell us that eukaryotic cells acquired first mitochondria and later plastids through assimilation and retention of useful prokaryotes, but textbooks also imply that these were one-off occurrences that happened long ago.…

Review: Orphan crops and their wild relatives in the genomic era More than half of human calories come from rice, wheat, and corn, although many other cereals have been domesticated as food crops. Several of these “orphan” cereal crops and their wild relatives are being studied with the goal…

More then four years ago, we started a weekly column to highlight a few plant science articles each week. The series lauched with the name What We're Reading, but at some point was rebranded to Plant Science Research Weekly. From early on, we've drawn on the interests and talents of the Plantae Fellows…

Review: Thriving under stress: How plants balance growth and stress response What exactly is the growth/defense tradeoff? This review is an excellent place to ask. Zhang et al. review evidence that shows that it is much more than a competition for limiting resources – the plant actively responds…

Review: The mechanical feedback theory of leaf lamina formation The contribution of microtubule orientation to the direction of cell expansion is familiar to most; when microtubules wrap around the middle of a cell like a belt, the cell expands in the perpendicular direction to become longer. Recent…

Review: Organelles-nucleus-plasmodesmata signaling, and roles in plant physiology, metabolism and stress responses Plasmodesmata (PD) are pores that connect plant cells and allow the flow of small molecules and information but also viruses. This traffic is tightly regulated, in large part by the deposition…

Review: Integration of reactive oxygen species and hormone signaling during abiotic stress During its life cycle, a plant experiences many types of abiotic stress including drought. While waiting for the next drops of water, a thirsty plant acclimates by initiating a series of tolerance responses.…

Review: Homoeologous exchanges, segmental allopolyploidy, and polyploid genome evolution Polyploidy or whole-genome duplication (WGD) is an important process in plant evolution and speciation. Additional sets of chromosomes can be derived from intraspecific genome duplication (autopolyploidy) or…

Review: Optogenetics in plants Optogenetics is the process by which light can modify cellular behavior, through the action of light-sensitive proteins or other molecules. In many respects, optogenetics seems more like science fiction than reality; the realization that neural activity in the brain…

This week’s Plant Science Research Weekly was guest-edited by Batthula Vijaya Lakshmi Vadde. She is currently a postdoc at Adrienne Roeder’s lab, Cornell University studying giant cell patterning in Arabidopsis sepals. Vijaya did her Ph.D. on trichome development in Arabidopsis with Utpal Nath from…

Perspective: Multiplying the efficiency and impact of biofortification through metabolic engineering As heterotrophs, we are what we eat. One of the UN Sustainable Development Goals is to end all forms of hunger, including the “hidden hunger” that results from nutrient deficiencies. Van Der…

Review: The second decade of synthetic biology: 2010–2020 I guess if this were a normal year, we’d be spending time looking back over the past decade, but Covid-19 has made anything pre-2019 seem like a different lifetime. Still, here’s a retrospective you don’t want to miss. Meng and…

Review: Less is more, natural loss-of-function mutation is a strategy for adaptation Gene gain through duplication and gene loss through loss-of-function (LoF) mutations determine genetic variation underlying diversification and adaptive evolution. In this review, Xu and Guo highlight the importance…

Review: Dry architecture: towards the understanding of the variation of longevity in desiccation- tolerant germplasm ($) Most seeds, pollen grains, and fern spores are desiccation-tolerant, meaning they remain viable after drying to low water contents. Given this property, they can be stored in cold…

Review: The hornworts: morphology, evolution and development Bryophytes and vascular plants share a land plant as a common ancestor, but they have evolved independently for more than 400 million years. Recent genomic studies of model bryophytes, particularly mosses and liverworts, have provided insights…

Guest Edited by Michela Osnato. I completed my studies at the University of Milan (ITALY), with a M.S. in Plant Biotechnology and a PhD in Plant Biology and crop productivity. The plasticity of plant development has always fascinated me. For this reason, I decided to investigate regulatory genes…

Review. Roles of plant retinoblastoma protein: cell cycle and beyond The cell cycle is at the heart of processes such as cell division, fate acquisition and cell cycle exit towards differentiation. Decades of cell cycle research in animals and yeast have outlined the main components that control the…

Review. Imaging flowers: a guide to current microscopy and tomography techniques to study flower development Flowers bear the reproductive organs and determine the reproductive success of plants by producing fruits and seeds. Flowers usually include four whorls of organs: sepals, petals, stamen…

Review: Extending Plant Defense Theory to Seeds ($) Plants have developed multiple mechanisms to deal with the natural enemies they encounter through their life. In consequence, the Plant Defense Theory has arisen to assess how plants allocate resources to this purpose. However, much of the efforts…

Stimulating photosynthetic processes increases productivity and water-use efficiency in the field                                                                                                       …

Multi-omics reveals mechanisms of total resistance to extreme illumination of a desert alga The green alga Chlorella ohadii was recently isolated from the harsh environment of desert biological sand crusts, where it is able to grow and thrive in extreme conditions. Previously, studies showed that…

Review: Potential applications of plant biotechnology against SARS-CoV-2 For those of you about to start teaching again, here’s a great article to share with your plant science students, showcasing the ways that plant biologists are contributing to the international efforts to develop diagnostic…

Seed Evolution Special Issue This week "Plant Science Research Weekly," focuses on the evolution of seeds and includes a selection of recent papers that use varying approaches to increase our understanding of the origin and changes of different seed features. Since seeds are transversal to multiple…

Guest Editor: Humberto Herrera-Ubaldo   Humberto is a postdoctoral Fellow at the de Folter Lab, in CINVESTAV-Irapuato (Mexico). He holds a PhD in Plant Biotechnology. During his career, he has focussed on the study of transcription factors guiding gynoecium and fruit development in Arabidopsis.…

Review: Emerging mechanisms to fine-tune receptor kinase signaling specificity Maybe it’s because I’ve spent too much time in lockdown, but sometimes I find studies on cell signaling a bit impenetrable. Fortunately, this excellent review by Galindo-Trigo et al. has arrived, which elegantly walks…

  Review: Banishing barberry: The history of Berberis vulgaris prevalence and wheat stem rust incidence across Britain Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici (Pgt) has a strange life strategy in that it requires two hosts to complete its sexual life cycle; wheat and barberry. In the absence…

Review: Feedback mechanisms between membrane lipid homeostasis and plant development Plant development is a regulated process of cell division, expansion, and differentiation. Membrane lipids are crucial to these processes, as illustrated in this review by Boutté and Jaillais. The authors discuss…

Review: Plant small heat shock proteins – evolutionary and functional diversity Heat shock proteins are rapidly induced by heat treatment and were among the first plant genes and proteins characterized in the early days of molecular biology, nearly 40 years ago. Waters and Vierling review the family…

Review Single-cell genomics and epigenomics: Technologies and applications in plants ($) Plants (embryophytes) are by definition multicellular, but we seek to understand them as the sum of the activities of individual cells. Much of this knowledge rests on information obtained through grinding up…

Review: Guard cell metabolism and stomatal function Stomatal conductance, gs, is one of the most important and highly regulated plant processes. Lawson and Matthews review how guard cell metabolism, stomatal anatomy and patterning, and signals from the mesophyll affect gs which in turn affects plant…

Review: Functions of anionic lipids in plants Moving materials within and out of cells requires that membranes carry identification labels, but when the membrane itself moves, that ID label must be updated. These requirements are met ingeniously by the anionic lipids, which are both a modifiable information…

Review: The bHLH network underlying plant shade-avoidance Shade avoidance is a complex phenomenon in which plants avoid shade by altering their developmental program in various ways including early flowering, hypocotyl elongation, and more. Many photoreceptors and transcription factors (TFs) are involved…

Review: Devastating intimacy: the cell biology of plant–Phytophthora interactions Phytophthora are plant-destroying oomycetes. Within this genus are several infamous disease-causing agents: P. infestans of the potato late-blight fame, P. sojae of soybean root rot, P. ramorum of sudden oak death,…

Review: Evo-physio: on stress responses and the earliest land plants Streptophytes are a grade of mostly freshwater algae that transitioned into land, a singularity that in turn gave rise to all present terrestrial flora. This passage along the hydrological gradient that culminated in land habitation…

Tissue-resolved multi-omics atlas of Arabidopsis Arabidopsis as a model system has been intensively studied over the past twenty years, but the proteome of Arabidopsis has been less well characterized. Here, Mergner et al. report the first 30-tissue-type integrated proteome, phosphoproteome and transcriptome…

Review: Evolution of virulence in rust fungi — multiple solutions to one problem Rust fungi are a diverse group (more than 7800 species) of phytopathogenic fungi that cause considerable economic loss. (Coincidently, I’m writing on Robigalia, the Roman “anti-rust” festival, which dates from…

Reviews: The physiology of plant responses to drought, and forests and drought ($) The increasing global population causes an increasing need for food, but the changing climate means increasing drought occurrences. The April 17 2020 special issue of Science focusses on drought and its effects on…

Review. Beyond natural: Synthetic expansions of botanical form and function “The goal of synthetic biology is to advance the ability to dependably and consistently design or reprogram living organisms and to fabricate products from biologically-derived materials.” In this review, Patron focuses…

White paper: Introducing plant biology graduate students to a culture of mental well‐being Graduate studies are challenging times, fraught with uncertainty and stress. Dewa et al. addressed this problem head on by developing a required, credited course for first-year graduate students, “Tools…

Editorial: Redeploying plant defences With COVID19 ravaging across the globe, the medicinal value of plants and related research fields e.g., phytochemistry, ethnobotany, etc., is presently in focus. The drug development chain, though extremely promising, is not an immediate solution as it is a long,…

Review. Signalling pathways underlying nitrogen-dependent changes in root system architecture: from model to crop species Nitrogen (N) is one of the seventeen essential nutrients for a plant to complete its life cycle and is one of the most important determinants of productivity of various crops globally.…

Update: How plants sense and respond to stressful environments A longstanding question in plant science is how plants “know” that they are under threat. The identification of cell-surface receptors that identify conserved pathogen patterns sheds some light on biotic stress perception, but what…

Opinion: We aren’t good at picking candidate genes, and it’s slowing us down Recent advances have facilitated the generation of huge phenotypic datasets from plant populations. However, the means to inexpensively organise such datasets to unequivocally determine causal genes has evaded researchers.…

Review: How mycorrhizal associations drive plant population and community biology ($) Great strides have been made in discovering the molecular players that allow plants and mycorrhizal fungi to establish their symbiosis. Here, Tedersoo et al. look beyond the single plant and address how these associations…

Review: Crop phenomics and high-throughput phenotyping Crop phenomics has lagged behind crop genomics because traditional methods are time-consuming, expensive, invasive and subjective. Recently, high-throughput, automated, sensor and machine-vision methods have been developed, as reviewed by Yang…

Review: In vitro analytical approaches to study plant ligand-receptor interactions It seems every other paper shows a nice diagram of a signaling cascade that includes a receptor interacting with its ligand. However, sometimes these diagrams are little more than speculation or guesswork. It’s not…

Review: Deep learning for plant genomics and crop improvement One of the goals of plant science is to use the molecular phenotype (genome, transcriptome, proteome) to predict the whole-plant phenotype. Deep learning approaches can potentially begin to do this, starting with a training dataset, and…

Review. Gossypium genomics: Trends, scope, and utilization for cotton improvement Cotton (Gossypium spp.) provides the world’s most important natural fiber, and I suspect with our growing realization of the problems with plastics there will be still more demand for it. Yang et al. review the current…

Review: Characteristics, drivers and feedbacks of global greening Whenever we talk about global trends there are of course local variations. Here, Piao et al. discuss recent trends of global greening, which is occurring at arctic as well as temperate and tropical regions. Overall, this greening is…

Review. Small RNAs and extracellular vesicles: New mechanisms of cross-species communication and innovative tools for disease control We have only recently begun to appreciate the phenomenon of cross-species or cross-kingdom small RNA transfer, and its applications. Using examples from plants and…

Guest Editor : Facundo Romani I am in an Argentinean PhD student at Universidad Nacional del Litoral (Santa Fe, Argentina) and current ASPB Plantae Fellow. I am about to finish my PhD program, during past years I worked with Javier Moreno as supervisor and spent a long stay at Monash University…

Review. Diatom molecular research comes of age:  Model species for studying phytoplankton biology and diversity Diatoms are photosynthetic eukaryotes and contribute substantially to global carbon fixation. They are distantly related to green plants, having shared the same primary endosymbiotic event,…

Review: The nanoscale organization of the plasma membrane and its importance in signaling – a proteolipid perspective Ample evidence shows that rather than being homogenous, plasma membrane lipids and proteins form distinct nanodomains. Jallais and Ott review plant plasma membrane nanodomains, and…

Special Current Opinion in Biotechnology issue Issue: Plant Biotechnology Since most of us will have a few days off this coming week as we welcome in 2020, I’d like to highlight some of the engrossing reviews in this special issue of Current Opinion in Biotechnology, edited by Ralf Reski, Gary…

Review: Pervasive human-driven decline of life on Earth points to the need for transformative change Reading this review by Diaz et al. feels a bit like reading a bad report card. Although we know we’re failing in our role as Earth’s stewards, we don’t always want to be reminded of this. But,…

This week we start with a short summary contributed by Charlotte Gommers hghlighting several papers published in 2019 that revealed new insights into an enigmatic plant gene, GUN1. Research update: GUN1 hit the mark in 2019 Chloroplasts are able to sense and respond to environmental signals. They…

Review. Dare to change, the dynamics behind plasmodesmata-mediated cell-to-cell communication A new review by Petit et al. skillfully highlights the role of plasmodesmata at the interface between cell biology and whole-plant physiology. These tiny channels that connect plant cells determine what…

Review: Design and engineering of advanced plant optogenetics systems Optogenetics uses light-sensitive proteins to trigger specific outputs in the cell in response to particular wavelengths of light. Many optogenetic systems use chimeric proteins that contain different sensor and effector domains;…

Review: The role of peptides cleaved from protein precursors in eliciting plant stress reactions Although the first signaling peptide identified in plants, systemin, is involved in stress responses, developmentally important peptide signals have largely occupied the limelight. This Tansley Review…

Review: Genetic strategies for improving crop yields Simply put, as food demand increases due to population growth and increased affluence, crop yields are likely to decrease due to the changing climate. Plant scientists will be familiar with many research avenues that aim to address this disconnect,…

Review: Exchange of small regulatory RNAs between plants and their pests Trans-species small RNAs are the latest class in the family of signals that move between plants and their attackers. Hudzik et al. review this topic, covering small RNAs that move from plant to pest and from pest to plant. The…

Review: Celebrating 20 years of genetic discoveries in legume nodulation and symbiotic nitrogen fixation Legumes are important crops because they are protein-rich, as a consequence of symbiotic nitrogen fixation (SNF). In the past 20 years, through forward and reverse genetics more than 200 genes…

Review: Interplay between turgor pressure and plasmodesmata during development Plasmodesmata, small cytoplasmic channels connecting adjacent cells, allow small molecules to move and redistribute information and resources. Plasmodesmatal aperture is highly regulated, which is crucial to development…

Guest Editor : Suresh Damodaran I am a postdoctoral research associate in Dr. Lucia Strader’s lab at WUSTL. My primary area of interest is understanding the role of plant hormones in development. I completed my graduate degree in Dr. Sen Subramanian’s lab at SDSTATE.  Twitter: @SureshDamod   Design…

This week’s Plant Science Research Weekly is guest edited by Arif Ashraf. He is a postdoc at Facette lab in the University of Massachusetts Amherst and his research focus is deciphering the asymmetric cell division during stomatal development. He is working as an ASPB ambassador, Plantae Fellow, Co-founder…

Letter. The human health benefits from GM crops If you’ve ever spoken publicly about GM crops, you’ve probably heard people express concern about how eating GM crops might affect their health. Smyth lays out a positive case for the human health benefits of GM crops, which will be a useful resource…

Evolutionary flexibility in flooding response circuitry in angiosperms ($) Flooding is unpredictable and can lead to plant death due to insufficient oxygen (hypoxia). Some plant species and varieties are better able to survive periods of submergence. Here, Reynoso et al. looked at gene networks…

Review: Plant networks as traits and hypotheses: Moving beyond description ($) In Star Wars Episode 2, Obi Wan identifies the location of a missing planet by walking through a 3D projection of the galaxy. I’ve always hoped that if we obtain enough data and figure out how to display it properly,…

Review: Revolutions in agriculture chart a course for targeted breeding of old and new crops ($) A few traits are associated with domestication across many species. Eshed and Lippman provide an overview of the changes to plant stature and flowering time that have been repeatedly selected by our…

Review: Metabolite control of translation by conserved peptide uORFs: The ribosome as a metabolite multi-sensor Not all mRNAs are translated equally. Between 25–50% of eukaryotic mRNAs have an upstream open reading frame (uORF) that affects translation of the main ORF (mORF). Usually the presence…

A modular cloning toolkit for genome editing in plants Genome editing with the CRISPR/Cas system is now widely used in functional studies across biological sciences including plant biology. Typically, this system involves a DNA nuclease and a guide RNA that directs the nuclease to a specific location…

Review: Developmental thermal responses in Arabidopsis Plants can modify their growth in response to environmental challenges. In a recent review, Vu et al. summarize the molecular mechanisms underlying high temperature responses during the Arabidopsis life cycle. At early stages, high temperature…

Review: Structural biology of cell surface receptor–ligand interactions In recent months, a flurry of papers have come out that reveal new insights into the structural interactions of cell-surface receptors with each other and with their ligands. This timely review by Moussu and Santiago captures…

Physcomitrella STEMIN transcription factor induces stem cell formation with epigenetic reprogramming Insights into transcription factors (TFs) in non-flowering plants are increading thanks to the establishment of new bryophyte model organisms. In new work, Ishikawa et al. present STEMIN1, a Physcomitrella…

Review: Methods to quantify primary plant cell wall mechanics Plant growth and morphogenesis are linked to cell wall properties, so a deep understanding of cell wall biochemistry and mechanics is essential for studying plant development. In a recent review, Bidhendi and Geitmann describe current and…

Review: Sulfated plant peptide hormones It’s hard to believe that when I was a student we were taught that “plants don’t have peptide hormones”. Since then we’ve discovered many diverse families of plant peptide hormones (see the Teaching Tool on peptide hormones for an excellent overview).…

Review: Formal description of plant morphogenesis ($) In recent years, a number of tools have been developed to describe and model plant morphogenesis, and these approaches have greatly informed our understanding of the molecular processes that underpin the control of growth. This excellent review…

Review: Synthetic biology in photosynthetic microbes: present and future Photosynthetic microbes are emerging models for synthetic biology applications since they possess relatively simple physiology and cellular organization, fast growth in liquid culture, and facile genetic manipulation. In this…

Critical residues for carotenoid biosynthesis by phytoene synthase Carotenoids are diverse structures that contribute to photosynthetic light harvesting and serve as pigments, photoprotectants, and precursors for vitamin A and signalling molecules. Phytoene synthase is the first committed enzyme…

Review: A series of fortunate events: Introducing Chlamydomonas as a reference organism Clamydomonas reinhardtii is the most thoroughly characterized unicellular alga. Like yeast, it is a single-celled eukaryotic organism that is easy to culture, and it lives predominantly in its haploid form but…

Review: N-degron pathway-mediated proteostasis in stress physiology The rate of most biological processes is ultimately determined by protein activity levels, which of course are determined by rate of degradation or inactivation as well as production. Dissmeyer reviews the Cys/Arg branch of…

Review: Source–sink regulation in crops under water deficit ($) Plants have a remarkable ability to coordinate cellular activities across huge distances, yet we have only a basic understanding of how these remote activities are coordinated. A review by Rodrigues et al. summarizes what we know about…

Review: Integration of sulfate assimilation with C and N metabolism in transition from C3 to C4 photosynthesis “Cysteine (HO2CCH(NH2)CH2SH) synthesis is the converging point of the three major pathways of primary metabolism: carbon, nitrate, and sulfate assimilation.” These metabolic connections…

Default activation and nuclear translocation of the plant cellular energy sensor SnRK1 ($) When I’m using my laptop without it being plugged in, at some point it enters battery saving mode as it senses that the battery charge is getting low. Organisms also sense their low energy reserves and activate…

Reflections on Classics: Plant Cell's 30th anniversary "The 1980s were an exciting and revolutionary time for biology, and plant molecular biology in particular," begins an editorial by Bob Goldberg, Brian Larkins, and Ralph Quatrano, the three Founding Editors of The Plant Cell. They describe why…

Durum wheat genome highlights past domestication signatures and future improvement targets Durum wheat cultivar Svevo (Triticum turgidum L. ssp. durum) is a cereal crop predominantly grown for pasta production. It is the result of multiple rounds of domestication, originally deriving from wild emmer…

Review: Functional status of xylem through time ($) If you haven’t been paying attention, you may have missed the great advances that have been taking place in xylem research recently. This excellent review by Brodersen et al. is your chance to catch up. Like all aspects of plant science, new…

Review. After the deluge: Plant revival post-flooding Crop losses due to flooding are occuring with increasing frequency. Whilst time submerged can be lethal, the post-submergence period is also potentially lethal. In this new review, Yeung et al. provide an overview of factors that contribute to…

Review. Multicellular systems biology: Applying network science to plant organ patterning and function I really enjoyed this review article, which very successfully introduces the reader to the why and how of how to apply network science to plant science. Bassel never veers off into abstraction…

Review: Copy Number Variations shaping plant domestication Human-associated plant domestication is a co-evolutionary process that began at least 12,000 years ago. However, the genetic variations underlying many domestication traits are still unknown. In this review, Lye and Purugganan discuss how…

Plant Physiology Focus issue on biotic stress The April 2019 issue of Plant Physiology includes a set of papers addressing biotic interactions between plant and pathogens or pests. As the editors indicate, progress on this topic has been rapid and significant. Key topics explored in reviews and research…

Review: Exploiting natural variation and genetic manipulation of stomatal conductance for crop improvement Identifying methods to improve crop productivity is vital considering the devastating consequences of climate change (e.g., frequent droughts). Stomatal conductance influences photosynthesis…

Review: Molecular networks of seed size control in plants ($) Crop yield is largely determined by the size of seeds, and studies are being conducted to understand the complex molecular network controlling the seed size. Li et al. review the possible molecular mechanisms and regulatory networks underlying…

Review: Linking autophagy to abiotic and biotic stress responses ($) Autophagy means “self-eating” in ancient Greek. It’s a process in which cellular components are delivered to lytic vacuoles to be reused. This recycling process promotes abiotic and biotic stress tolerance. In this review,…

Review: Evolutionary and ecological insights from herbicide resistant weeds: what have we learned about plant adaptation, and what is left to uncover? Weeds represent a problem for the economy due to their easy resistance of pesticides, but they are also a model for adaptation, ecology and evolution.…

Review: The metabolic response to drought ($) Understanding environmental stress in plants is undoubtedly important due to the consequences of climate change in crop productivity and survival of plants. Metabolomics based on liquid chromatography and gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry…

Review: Cytokinin – A developing story ($) With its diverse chemical structures, the phytohormone cytokinin is significant from embryogenesis to the maturation of plants. In this review, Wybouw and De Rybel highlight in detail cytokinin signaling in multiple plant developmental process including…

A comparison of the EU regulatory approach to directed mutagenesis with that of other jurisdictions, consequences for international trade and potential steps forward The seed sector, and particularly plant breeders, are responsible for providing farmers with new plant varieties able to overcome challenges…

Opinion: To learn inclusion skills, make it personal This is a great essay by David Asai, Senior Director for science education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. David describes his journey from feeling annoyed at having to attend a multicultural forum to embracing their merit. He describes…

Happy February! This week we have a special issue featuring summaries written by candidates for the  2019 Plantae Fellows program. (Official announcement to follow soon). Review: Deep learning on image-based plant phenotyping The development of deep learning brings opportunities to train computers…

Special Issue: Genome to Phenome (Plant Journal) It’s January, which seems to be a month of weather extremes for many “temperate” parts of the globe. Here’s an excellent collection to curl up with as you try to stay warm or cool and out of the elements. The issue includes free-to-access reviews…

Physiologia Plantarum Special Issue: Root Biology The year 2019 kicks off with a special issue on root biology, with all articles free to access for six months. Topics include interactions of roots with parasites and symbionts, root branching, transport in the root system, and roots of woody species.…

This week’s edition is guest edited by Arif Ashraf, a PhD student at Iwate University, Japan and Graduate Student Ambassador of ASPB (NOTE: Apply by January 15th to be an ASPB ambassador). His research interest is understanding the hormonal interplay in primary root development of Arabidopsis thaliana.…

A look back at the most popular articles shared on Plantae social media in 2018. Plantae Social Media Interns Katie Rogers and Juniper Kiss have been reviewing the 2018 stats. Previously they shared the most popular posts overall. Here, they share the posts to research and review articles that got…

Welcome to the penultimate 2018 collection of plant research highlights. Starting this week, for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes we are renaming the series "Plant Science Research Weekly". We thank contributors and readers for their ongoing support. We started this project more than two…

Opinion: A canopy conundrum: can wind-induced movement help to increase crop productivity by relieving photosynthetic limitations? ($) High wind speeds may result in substantial damage to crop canopies, resulting in a loss of productivity.  Lower wind speeds affect crop canopies in different ways…

New journal launched – Plants, People, Planet Congratulations to everyone involved in the launch of the new journal Plants, People, Planet, “… a new cross-disciplinary Open Access journal from the New Phytologist Trust focusing on the interface between plants and society.” I’m sure that…

Opinion: Limits to tree growth and longevity ($) I think trees are awesome, and I mean that in the truest sense of the word. They dwarf us in height, and when we look at a tree that has lived for hundreds or thousands of years it is impossible not to think of that span in terms of human generations…

Editorial. Counting what counts: the importance of quantitative approaches to studying plant cell biology In the new Cell Biology issue of Current Opinion in Plant Biology, editors Haswell and Dixit have chosen to focus on quantitative cell biology, arguing that, “if seeing is believing, then measuring…

Review: Single-particle tracking for the quantification of membrane protein dynamics in living plant cells Real-time tracking is a hugely powerful way to understand the behavior of single proteins. Cui et al. review the methods and applications of single-particle tracking (SPT) in plant cells. They…

Editorial: The challenge of the post-truth era Why do people persist in thinking that climate change is not happening, or that vaccines cause autism? Scientists need to find better ways to communicate about what we do. In this editorial from Nature Cell Biology, the authors point to the low science…

This week’s edition is guest edited by Arif Ashraf, a PhD student at Iwate University, Japan and Graduate Student Ambassador of ASPB. His research interest is understanding the hormonal interplay in primary root development of Arabidopsis thaliana. He blogs about plant science (http://www.aribidopsis.com/).…

This week's edition is guest edited by Matthias Benoit, a postdoctoral Research Associate at The Sainsbury Laboratory University of Cambridge. His research focuses on the developmental, environmental and epigenetic regulation of tomato retrotransposons. His favorite models of study are fruit development…

Guest editor: Magdalena Julkowska  Magdalena is a PostDoc at King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST, Saudi Arabia) working with Prof. Mark Tester. Her main interests are (1) salt-induced changes in root-to-shoot ratio in Arabidopsis, (2) study the expression patterns in plants…

Focused Review: A role for ecophysiology in the ’omics’ era Ecophysiology is the study of plant functioning as modulated by the environment (or, as described by one author, "outdoors physiology"). Flexas and Gago ask whether research (and training) in  ecophysiology has been left behind somewhat…

Special Issue: Long-distance signaling ($) Of course plants need to communicate between their different parts, and our understanding of these crucial signals has been advancing rapidly. This issue of Plant Cell Physiology includes a set of papers highlighting recent findings. A meeting report by…

Review: Harnessing synthetic chemistry to probe and hijack auxin signaling Auxin has been studied since Charles Darwin observed the phototropic response. More recently, chemical genetic approaches using auxin agonists and antagonists have been applied to studies of auxin. Torii et al. review how…

This week's edition is guest edited by Arif Ashraf, a PhD student at Iwate University, Japan and Graduate Student Ambassador of ASPB. His research interest is understanding the hormonal interplay in primary root development of Arabidopsis thaliana. He blogs about plant science (http://www.aribidopsis.com/).…

Review: X-ray fluorescence microscopy imaging Kopittke et al. review the use of synchrotron-based X-ray fluorescence microscopy as a tool to quantify and localize diverse elements in plants. The authors describe how this method can be used to study nutrients in plants and human foods, as well as metal…

Perspective: The multiplanetary future of plant synthetic biology The exploration of space is one of the most inspiring areas of scientific research and a major driver of technological innovation. One of the major factors limiting human expansion trough space is the immensely high cost of resupplying…

Genome assemblies of maize lines Mo17 and W22: Extensive intraspecific variation, and resource for functional biology The maize genome is largely composed of transposable elements, which is one reason maize has been such a powerful genetic model. However, these transposons also mean that there is…

Review: MYBs drive novel consumer traits in fruits and vegetables The MYB transcription factors, specifically the R2R3 family of MYBs, are closely associated with the regulation of anthocyanin biosynthesis. This easy-to-score trait made MYBs some of the earliest characterized plant transcription factors.…

News: CRISPR gene-edited plants subject to same restrictions as GMO plants On 25 July, the European Court of Justice ruled that “Organisms obtained by mutagenesis are GMOs and are, in principle, subject to the obligations laid down by the GMO Directive,” and “The Court of Justice takes the view,…

This week we have a short edition as the editor and many of the contributors have been busy at the Plant Biology meeting in Montréal, Canada. This was a hugely successful conference by all accounts. You can get a glimpse of it from the level of activity on Twitter - see #PlantBio18. Besides great scientific…

Review. Genetically encoded biosensors in plants: Pathways to discovery ($) Genetically-encoded biosensors are produced from genes, and provide a specific readout (usually fluorescence or luminescence) of the amount and distribution of a compund of interest (the analyte). We’ve all see data obtained…

Review: Plasmodesmata- form and function ($) Plasmodesmata are cell-cell junctions forming cytosolic bridges between neighbouring plant cells that provide an essential avenue for intercellular communication during a multitude of developmental and stress-related responses throughout the plant kingdom.…

Auxin methylation is required for differential growth in Arabidopsis Plants need to navigate and adjust their growth according to the environmental clues, such as light or gravity. Asymmetric distribution of auxin is necessary for organ bending. Abbas and colleagues show that conversion of indole-3-acetic…

This week we have some guest contributions from undergraduate student interns working with Professor Maria Julissa Ek-Ramos from the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon. Julissa helped the students select and read the papers, and worked with them on writing and editing the summaries, with additional editing…

Guest editor: Danielle Roodt Prinsloo Danielle is a PhD candidate in the Forest Molecular Genetics (FMG) Programme at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She has been a Plantae Fellow since September 2017, having joined after attending her first ASPB Plant Biology meeting. Danielle is a plant…

Review: Beyond fossil fuel–driven nitrogen transformations ($) Obtaining the high yields needed to feed the human population depends on the application of nitrogen-containing fertilizers to non-leguminous crops, yet the production of these compounds consumes 1 – 2% of global energy output. Plant…

Review: A guide to sequence your favorite plant genomes Every year, genome assembly gets faster and cheaper. Li and Harkness provide a practical guide to today’s methods, with caveats and precautions that need to be considered at each step, even questions to ask before embarking on a sequencing…

Review: Same tune, different song — cytokinins as virulence factors in plant–pathogen interactions? Many pathogens produce virulence factors that improve their pathogenicity, including in some cases compounds produced by the host, such as the hormone cytokinin. Spallek et al. review the various…

Review: A newly proposed plastid: the xyloplast ($) In its simplest definition, a plastid is an organelle that manufactures and stores essential chemical compounds used by its host cell. Numerous plastids exist beyond the familiar chloroplast. Chromoplasts synthesise and store carotenoid pigments,…

Review:  Venus Flytrap: How an excitable, carnivorous plant works The one sure-fire way to get children excited about plants is to show them how a Venus flytrap works. But how does it work? We’ve all heard that the trap “counts” the number times it is triggered, and that it requires two or…

Guest Editor: Dr. Elisa Dell’Aglio Elisa holds a PhD in Plant Biochemistry from the University of Grenoble – CEA (France) and just finished a first Post-Doc at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She has been a Plantae Fellow since September 2017. Her work is aimed at understanding how cofactors,…

Review: The origin and evolution of mycorrhizal symbioses Many fungi are pathogens that kill or weaken their plant hosts. However, there are also many species that form beneficial relationships with plants, algae, and cyanobacteria. One of these mutualisms is the mycorrhizal association between a…

Commentary. 10KP: A phylodiverse genome sequencing plan Nobody doubts the great insights we have gained about plant diversity and evolution from genome sequencing, but the patchy nature of available genomes within the plant phylogeny remains a problem. Cheng et al. describe the 10KP (10,000 Plants)…

Review. Autophagy: The master of bulk and selective recycling A functioning cell depends upon the appropriate production of proteins and macromolecules. The other end of the process, degradation and removal, is just as critical and just as selective. Marshall and Vierstra review autophagy (“self-eating”)…

Letters: Auxin and vesicle traffic Three letters to Plant Physiology address the role of vesicles in auxin transport, discussing the evidence and conclusions from a recently published paper from three perspectives. Does auxin accumulate in endocytic vesicles? If so, how, and why? The Letters address…

Review. Plant evolution: landmarks on the path to terrestrial life "Simply put, land plants evolved once; the biological significance of this singularity is writ large across the surface of the globe." When I consider the incredible diversity found in life's rich tapestry, I'm continually amazed that…

This week's edition is guest edited by Arif Ashraf (@aribidopsis), a graduate student of United Graduate School of Agricultural Sciences, Iwate University, Japan and Graduate student ambassador of American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB). His research interest is understanding the hormonal interplay…

Guest Editor: Dr. Isabel Mendoza Isabel is a plant biologist from Spain that got her PhD on (Plant) Biotechnology in 2013 with a study about secondary metabolism in spike lavender.  Since then she has changed her career path a bit into R&D and innovation management and science communication.…

Guest Editor: Dr. Amey Redkar Amey is a postdoc at The Sainsbury Laboratory, Norwich, UK and has been a Plantae Fellow since September 2017. He is working to understand the interaction of plants and pathogens during disease development. His current research which is funded by EMBO Long Term Fellowship…

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…

Nature news feature: The lost art of looking at plants Nature.  With the advent of advanced molecular techniques and tools, the detailed scrutiny of a plant’s physical attributes fell to the wayside. Focus has shifted from physiological characterization of a board range of species to detailed genomic…

Guest Editor: Dr. Amey Redkar Amey is a postdoc at The Sainsbury Laboratory, Norwich, UK and has been a Plantae Fellow since September 2017. He is working to understand the interaction of plants and pathogens during disease development. His current research which is funded by EMBO Long Term Fellowship…

This week's papers were seleted by Renee Dale. Renee is a PhD student in biology and an MS student in statistics at Loiusiana State University who is studying mathematical biology and biostatistics for plant biology applications. She is also working on an educational video game! Renee selected these…

Focus Issue: Cellular Dynamics Plant Physiology has released a focus issue on the topic of Cellular Dynamics, which includes Updates on topics ranging from Actin Dynamics to Wall Growth. The Editorial by Szymanski, Bassham, Munnik, and Sakamoto provides an excellent overview of the current state of…

Guest Editor:  Alecia Biel Alecia is a graduate student at The Ohio State University in the US and has been a Plantae Fellow since September 2017.  Her research focuses on elucidating hormone signaling pathways and the role of the nucleus during this process, particularly throughout plant abiotic…

Review: On the selectivity, specificity and signaling potential of long-distance movement of messenger RNA Regulation of transcription occurs at the cell-type specific level, but transcribed messenger RNA is mobile and can move between tissues through plant vasculature, serving as a long distance…

Point of View: A transatlantic perspective on 20 emerging issues in biological engineering studies “Horizon scanning” describes the process of trying to rationally predict the future.  Wintle et al. describe the results from a horizon-scanning exercise to identify emerging issues in biological…

Commentary: The next generation of training for Arabidopsis researchers: Bioinformatics and quantitative biology Friesner and 38 other authors have written a Commentary outlining the need to radically redesign training for plant scientists to prepare for the massive production of biological data.…

Review.  Genomic selection in plant breeding: Methods, models, and perspectives In future years, climate change may cause significant economic losses to countries worldwide. Consequently, genetic improvement of crops fit for drought-stressed and semi-arid regions is becoming a must. In this review,…

A special "thank you" too the many people who have contributed to What We're Reading over the past year! And don't forget you can sign up to receive email alerts - click here then "Notify me of new content". Review: Plant systems biology at the single-cell level The establishment and enormous…

J. Exp. Bot. Special Issue. The plant cuticle: old challenges, new perspectives ($) The cuticle is a cell-wall polymer that protects against desiccation, pathogens and UV light.  Domínguez et al. provide an open-access editorial that describes this fine collection of articles covering all aspects…

Review: Growth-mediated plant movements: hidden in plain sight ($) Time-lapse imaging reveals the slow movements of plants, such as phototropism and gravitropism. Harmer and Brooks review the molecular bases for these growth-mediated movements. While auxin has long been known to be involved in photo-…