Recent Posts

Plant Science Research Weekly: June 27, 2025

Special Science Issue: Plants and Heat The June 12 issue of Science has a focus on plants and heat that includes several excellent review and research articles. In a very interesting review, Singh Yadav et al. discuss the complex and fascinating question of how plants sense temperature, emphasizing…

Plant Science Research Weekly: June 6, 2025

Review: Gene discovery, from Arabidopsis to crops This year marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of the first genome sequence of a plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, (see https://doi.org/10.1038/35048692). As this review by Bevan et al. observes, this exciting accomplishment was met with some skepticism…

Plant Science Research Weekly: May 23, 2025

Review: Lost in translation – lessons from concepts that don’t translate from Arabidopsis The May 2025 issue of The Plant Cell has a focus on Arabidopsis and how this simple model plant has had an outsized impact on our understanding of pretty much everything botanical (and beyond). Alongside…

Plant Science Research Weekly: May 9, 2025

Forum. Plant surveillance: The emerging role of substrate-binding proteins Plants are sessile organisms and, unlike animals, cannot escape adverse environmental conditions. To cope with this limitation, they have evolved a complex surveillance system to detect and respond to fluctuating conditions…

Plant Science Research Weekly: April 25th, 2025

Review: Cycad, chemicals, and coevolution Cycads are an ancient lineage of gymnosperms with fascinating ecological interactions. In a recent review, Salzman et al. examine the various adaptations of cycads, from attracting pollinators to repelling parasites, focusing on the roles of their wide array…

Plant Science Research Weekly: April 11, 2025

Review: Celebrating 150 years of Arabidopsis genetics The first known report of an Arabidopsis thaliana mutant appeared approximately 150 years ago (1873). In the intervening years, Arabidopsis has become an essential model for plant genetic research, driving groundbreaking discoveries across multiple…

Plant Science Research Weekly: March 21, 2025

Resolving phytohormone response zones by fluorescent reporters Phytohormones such salicylic acid (SA), ethylene (ET), and jasmonic acid (JA) are known to regulate plant immunity, but their spatial dynamics has remained unclear. Using a set of fluorescent reporters in Arabidopsis, Calabria et al.…

Plant Science Research Weekly: March 7, 2025

Review: The complexities of metabolite transport in C4 photosynthesis C4 photosynthesis, an adaptive mechanism to spatially concentrate CO2 around Rubisco to enhance carbon fixation, has evolved independently at least 60 times in plants. This process spatially separates the initial carbon fixation…

Plant Science Research Weekly: February 21, 2025

Perspective: How should the advancement of large language models affect the practice of science? In this thought-provoking Perspective, four sets of authors express their opinions about the use of Large Language Models (such as ChatGPT) in the practice of science. Each essay is well reasoned, and…