Recent Posts

Headshot of Thelma Madzima. In the background are a series of pipette tip boxes and a mini vortexer.

URM Plant Scientist Highlights - Thelma Madzima (she/her)

Dr. Thelma Madzima (she/her) is one of very few Black faculty in the USA who are plant molecular biologists. Originally from Zimbabwe, Thelma immigrated to the US at the age of 17 to attend college. She received her B.S. in Plant Science and Plant Biotechnology from Fort Valley State University, a historically…

Maintaining membrane integrity in the face of abiotic stress

Ruiz-López & Pérez-Sancho et al describe a mechanism that control the homeostasis of diacylglycerol at the plasma membrane in plants after abiotic stress. Plant Cell. https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koab122 Miguel Ángel Botella Mesa – IHSM-UMA-CSIC, Málaga, Spain Jessica Pérez Sancho…

How a Mangrove tree can help to improve the salt tolerance of Arabidopsis and Rice

Affiliation: University of Melbourne ORCiD: 0000-0001-5092-6168 email: marc.somssich@unimelb.edu.au Mangrove trees live and thrive in intertidal zones, where they are regularly inundated with salt water. To survive such harsh environmental conditions, they have evolved several features to improve…

The fat of the land: cuticle formation in terrestrial plants

Madeleine Seale Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3RB, United Kingdom Maddy.seale@plants.ox.ac.uk ORCID: 0000-0002-8924-3943   In a world surrounded by a vast expanse of gaseous air, water is constantly evaporating from aqueous sources…

A high-five for high light protection

Kasper van Gelderen Utrecht University k.vangelderen@uu.nl Plants cannot live without light, but they also cannot live with too much light. Beyond a certain threshold, a high light intensity will damage the photosynthetic apparatus directly. Furthermore, high light leads to the production of reactive…

Extrapolating physiological response to drought through step-by-step analysis of water potential

Guillaume Charrier Université Clermont Auvergne, INRAE, PIAF, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, France. guillaume.charrier@inrae.fr Water potential (Ψ) defines the energy required to move water between the different compartments of a closed system. Water flows passively in the direction of decreasing…

How to Eat One’s Feelings: Autophagy and Phosphatidylinositol 3-Phosphate

Moving around taught me two essential skills, only one being relevant here: how to put up wallpaper, and how critical it is to label boxes to help the moving company drop them at their intended location. Now think of a cell: the boxes are vesicles, their contents are proteins and metabolites, and the…

MYB30 links the ROS wave to systemic acclimation

Amna Mhamdi Ghent University, Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, and VIB Center for Plant Systems Biology, 9052 Ghent, Belgium Address correspondence to amna.mhamdi@psb.ugent.be Stress signals trigger systemic signaling and acclimation. The propagation of reactive oxygen species…

A DNA Methylation Reader with an Affinity for Salt Stress

High levels of soil salinity lead to toxic accumulation of sodium (Na+) and chloride (Cl-) ions in plants, which adversely affect plant growth and yield. Plants use several strategies to cope with salt stress. These include removal and compartmentalization of toxic ions, and maintenance of growth and…