Recent Posts

PIFs link environmental changes with chromatin dynamics (Nature Genetics)

PHYTOCHROME INTERACTING FACTORS (PIFs) play a pivotal role in mediating the responses of plants to various environmental stimuli. Although the importance of PIFs in shade avoidance response is well known, the relative contributions of different PIFs have not been discretely determined. In a recent study,…

A TOTally new pathway regulating thermomorphogenesis (Nature Comms)

Increase in ambient temperature often causes remarkable changes in the shape and organization of plant body, including elongation of hypocotyl and petioles, early flowering, and reduction in stomatal index, collectively known as thermomorphogenesis. Virtually all the molecular pathways that are known…

Review: One cell, many signatures: Organellar Ca2+ signaling (Plant Physiol.)

Calcium ions (Ca2+) occupy a primary position in plant cell signaling processes by virtue of their role as the so-called second messengers. Ca2+ signaling underlies plant response to various abiotic, biotic and developmental cues. Whilst this Ca2+ signaling was thought to predominantly occur in the cytoplasm,…

Plantae Presents: Sophia Stone and Sjon Hartman

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  Plantae Presents: Sophia Stone and Sjon Hartman Recorded April 14  Sophia Stone: The ubiquitin-proteasome system at the crossroads of abiotic and biotic stress tolerance Sophia Stone earned her PhD at York University, Canada, and completed an HFSP long-term fellowship at the University…

Review: Can smart nutrient applications optimize the plant's hidden half to improve drought resistance? (Physiol. Plant.)

The root system has three key functions: support/anchoring, uptake of water, and uptake of nutrients. Many questions remain about how roots integrate all of these functions into the architecture of a single system. Here, Bardhan et al. explore whether modifying the nutrient environment (hence root’s…

Measuring the physical-chemical effects of osmotic stress in living cells (bioRxiv)

The osmotic state of a cell is affected by internal (metabolite content) and external (water availability) factors. Recent work by Cuevas-Velazquez and colleagues describes the design of a FRET-based biosensor that allows dynamic monitoring of osmotic stress in living cells. They exploited features of…

Evolution and ecology of seed internal morphology in relation to germination characteristics in Amaranthaceae ($) (Ann. Bot.)

Seed germination, a critical life stage in a plant's life cycle, can be affected by internal seed morphology. In this exciting research, Vandelook and colleagues investigated the evolution of embryo and nutritive tissue characteristics and their relationship with the germination traits of 84 species…

Review: On tree longevity (New Phytol)

Everyone enjoys hearing about ancient trees that have been alive since various events in human history, but did you ever stop to wonder why some trees live for millennia and others don’t? If so, you’ll want to read this Tansley Review by Piovesan and Biondi. One of their first observations is that…

Convergence of sphingolipid desaturation across over 500 million years of plant evolution (Nature Plants)

If you remember your biochemistry, lipids that are saturated (without double bonds) pack more tightly and therefore have a higher melting temperature than those that are unsaturated, therefore bend and pack less tightly (think of margarine versus oil). Plants can modify their membranes in a temperature-responsive…