A weekly plant science research roundup curated and summarized by our Plantae Editors and Fellows
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 both the biophysical nature of temperature…
They May 29 issue of Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. B. similarly addresses the pressing questions of how crop plants will continue to feed the world in spite of the rapidly changing climate. This issue covers…
In a recent review, Nieves-Cordones and Rubio highlight the species-specific strategies used by Arabidopsis and crop plants to regulate potassium (K⁺) and sodium (Na⁺) transport, which challenges the…
Root growth and branching is strongly tuned to environmental conditions including soil compaction, nutrient availability, and the presence of water, with auxin having a major role in regulating root architecture.…
Root cells are organized into concentric layers that facilitate the movement of water and nutrients. Among these, the endodermis overlays the root vasculature, allowing it to play a major role in selective…
Leaf venation patterns display remarkable diversity across both living and fossil plant lineages, yet key questions remain about when and how these architectural differences emerged and what functional…
Synthetic herbicides are widely used in agriculture to control weeds, often by targeting the physiological pathways regulated by auxins, plant hormones that induce root growth and development. PIN-FORMED…
Nicotiana benthamiana is widely used to reconstruct complex, multi-step metabolic pathways for research or industrial purposes. This is enabled by rapid and high-level protein expression after agroinfiltration.…
Paclitaxel (sold as Taxol) is taxane diterpene natural product of yew trees (Taxus spp.) and a potent stabilizer of microtubules that is effective in treatment of cancers. However, it has proven difficult…
Seed germination is a critical developmental switch that depends not only on stored mRNA but also on the selective translation of these transcripts. In this study, Wang et al. explored how translational…
Salt stress can severely affect cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) productivity, especially during early growth. Cao et al. identified a molecular switch in cotton that fine-tunes responses to salt stress and…
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…
Each week, the Plantae editors select new plant science research articles to highlight. The short summaries describe the question addressed and key findings, with links to the article.
