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.…