Tag: Abiotic Interactions

Soil salinity is a major stress that hampers plant growth, but plants have evolved signaling pathways to sense and respond to salinity.  Zhou and colleagues have recently reported a novel pathway in Arabidopsis thaliana that that involves a peptide ligand, PAMP-INDUCED SECRETED PEPTIDE 3  (PIP3) and…

Global warming severely affects agricultural harvests, risking food security. To deal with heat stress, plants show different strategies. Indeed, heat increases intracellular Ca2+ levels to activate a heat shock response. In addition, GTP-binding proteins, which transduce extracellular signals to intracellular…

With the rising climatological extremes, heat stress is a major concern towards sustainable crop yield and productivity as it impairs several physiological and developmental processes. Due to the sessile lifestyle of land plants, they undergo various acclimation responses to cope with fluctuating temperatures.…

Posttranscriptional events such as splicing are part of the gene regulation toolbox. Previous studies have demonstrated a role for U-rich small nuclear ribonucleoproteins (snRNPs) such as U1 in the control of splicing. In a recent paper in The Plant Cell, Chang et al. identified a splicing factor, RNA…

In addition to the vast array of metabolic and signaling roles, nitric oxide (NO) is prominently involved in low oxygen sensing in seeds and waterlogged plants. In Arabidopsis, the cytosolic nitrate reductase (NR) isoforms NIA1/NIA2 catalyze the reductive pathway of NO generation. NO sensing in plants…

Acidic soils often negatively impact plant growth, yet the application of fertilizers containing urea or ammonia have the effect of acidifying soils. In a recent paper, Ye and colleagues investigated how nitrate uptake through the nitrate transporter NITRATE TRANSPORTER 1.1 (NRT1.1) can mitigate some…

Plants experience changes in gene expression and cellular metabolism to improve their survival to abiotic stresses, such as hypoxia. It has been observed that environmental signals induce phospholipase D (PLD) which generates phosphatidic acid (PA) by cleaving membrane phospholipids. Indeed, submergence…

The November issue of Plant Physiology is a Focus Issue on Architecture and Plasticity. One of the most intriguing aspects of plant growth and development is the environmental responsiveness (also known as “plasticity”) of plant architecture (growth form). Depending on environmental conditions, roots…