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…