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…