Tag: Abiotic Interactions

Most students learn that metabolism does not increase at the same rate as an animal’s size – an elephant eats much less per unit of body mouse than a mouse does. This non-linear scaling, described through metabolic scaling theory, also occurs in plants – the growth rate of large plants is relatively…

Toh et al. screened more than 20,000 chemicals from chemical libraries for compounds that regulate stomatal movement. They used Commelina benghalensis for their screen, as its stomata are about twice as large as those in Arabidopsis thaliana. They identified nine compounds that inhibited stomatal opening…

Ding et al. have just elucidated an important protein involved in the cold response of plants: BTF3L (basic transcription factor 3-like). The CBF/DREB (C-repeat binding factor/dehydration-responsive element protein) family of transcription factors are the main cold responsive pathway. The new article…

In a new study published in The Plant Cell, a team of researchers identified a gene that limits yield losses in rice plants exposed to salt stress and deciphered the underlying mechanism. Soil salinity poses a major threat to food security, greatly reducing the yield of agricultural crops. Rising…

Stress due to high heat and drought causes losses in wheat production all over the world. While genetic variation and quantitative trait loci for drought and heat tolerance are known, the genetic loci that underlie tolerance to these combined stress are likely different from those that underlie each…

Salinity is a widespread stressor. Zhou et al. investigated the role of receptor-like kinases (RLKs) in salinity tolerance by identifying RLKs that are transcriptionally upregulated by salt treatment. Candidates were introduced either as overexpression (full-length) or dominant negative (partial) clones,…

Du et al. investigate an important protein that regulates photosynthesis under stress. Plant Cell. https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.17.00446.                                                                               Background:…

Rice (Oryza sativa) paddies frequently become submerged during the rainy season in some parts of South and Southeast Asia, such as Bangladesh, India, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Submergence stress is harmful to plants. In addition to causing O2- and CO2-deficient conditions by restricting environmental…