Search What We’re Reading This Week
A multi-species synthesis of physiological mechanisms in drought-induced tree mortality
Global change forecasts include projections of severe droughts that could affect many forested biomes, largely influencing future energy and element fluxes. There are two physiological mechanisms associated with tree mortality in response to drought: hydraulic failure (inhibition of water transport) and carbon starvation (imbalance between carbon demand and supply). Adams et al. studied the prevalence […]
A worldwide-scale relationship between leaf size and climate ($)
Leaf size varies by over 100,000-fold across the plant kingdom. Leaf area has a direct impact on tissue temperature and thus directly affects photosynthetic efficiency. Empirical observations by 19th century plant geographers described that larger leaves are usually restricted to plants growing in wet tropics; nevertheless environmental factors driving leaf size haven’t been studied at […]
Artificial light at night as a new threat to pollination ($)
During our holidays, many of us plant scientists love to go to re-energize in remote places, ideally with no technology. Have you ever imagined how our “advanced” way of living is changing our environment? In a recent paper, Knop et al. show evidence that nocturnal pollinators are negatively affected by Artificial Light At Night and […]
Phototropin perceives temperature based on the lifetime of its photoactivated state
Fujii et al. studied the role that blue-light perceiving phototropins play in sensing temperature. They studied the temperature response in the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha, which has only one phototropin. At 5°C, blue-light perception by phototropins induces a cold-avoidance response in which chloroplasts move to the sides of the cells; by contrast at 22°C the chloroplasts […]
Seasonal regulation of petal number in Cardamine hirsute
Flower development, unlike flowering timing, is a robust process not much affected by seasonal variation, such that the number of floral organs in each flower can be predicted quite precisely for different plant families. Most Brasiccaceae family species have flowers with fours petals, however, Cardamine hirsuta shows petal number variation at species, population and individual […]
4D root gene expression
It becomes more and more clear that regulation of complex traits and processes, such as root growth and lateral root growth, involves not only gene expression quality (which genes are expressed), quantity (how much transcript is present) and space (in which cell-type transcripts are accumulating) but also time plays an important role. Walker et al. […]
521 Articles | Page 1 of 87
