Tag: Biochemistry

The cosmetic industry uses a lot of different chemicals to produce the seven or so skin care products used by the average American every day. Efforts are underway to develop renewable sources for some of these. Derikvand et al. review the chemistry and potential applications behind compounds used by…

Continuing the theme of peptide signaling, Stegmann et al. showed that a subset of the RALF (RAPID ALKALINIZATION FACTOR) family of plant peptides can negatively regulate plant immune responses. When plants are treated with flg22, a peptide epitope of bacterial flagellin, they produce reactive oxygen…

The interaction between angiosperms and their pollinators provides an excellent system to study co-evolution, and underpins the evolution of the biosynthesis of numerous interesting and useful specialized metabolites, from pigments to fragrances. Borghi et al. review the metabolic pathways that produce…

Magnaporthe oryzae is the fungus that causes rice blast disease, which is a serious threat to food security. Ortiz et al. explore the interaction between AVR-Pia, a fungal effector protein, and RGA5, a rice NLR (nucleotide-binding domain and leucine-rich repeat protein) immune receptor protein. RGA5…

Several studies have implicated microRNAs in plant defenses against pathogens. Wu et al. previously showed that virus resistance is facilitated by the interaction of viral-inducible AGO18 (which is cleavage-inactive) and rice miR528. In this work, they identified the role of miR528 in viral resistance.…

Students learn that membrane proteins are inserted into the endoplasmic-reticulum (ER) membrane co-translationally, but this mechanism does not hold for so-called tail-anchored (TA) proteins which carry a single C-terminal membrane spanning domain and insert into the ER membrane post-translationally.…

Our way of life depends on the chemical manufacture of thousands of products. Some of these can be produced through biomanufacturing, which may involve starting with a biological starting material, or using an enzyme or organism as catalyst. Advances in synthetic biology, metabolic engineering and genomics…

Iron (Fe) is a frequently limiting nutrient for plant growth. Iron uptake requires that plants manipulate the extracellular environment through secretion of protons, chelators and other molecules. Curie and Mari review new studies on the importance of coumarin (phenolic compound) secretion in iron uptake,…