Tag: Cell Biology

When plants are exposed to excessive light, photoinhibition occurs and chloroplasts become damaged. Photodamaged chloroplasts undergo vacuolar digestion through a poorly understood autophagic process called chlorophagy.  In general, cell biologists recognize two types of autophagy: macroautophagy and…

Within cells there are vast numbers of different activities and processes occurring simultaneously. In eukaryotic cells, some of these processes are segregated into distinct membrane-bound compartments. Cuevas-Velazquez and Dinneny review how membraneless compartments also contribute to subcellular organization,…

The three-dimensional arrangement of DNA within the nucleus clearly affects gene expression, but its contribution remains relatively unexplored as compared to other factors. Sotelo-Silveira et al. review new chromosome conformation capture (3C) and derived techniques for assessing genomes in 3D, as well…

A key question in plant stress physiology is how the plant perceives stress in order to mitigate its effects. Heat (and other) stress can lead to an accumulation of unfolded or misfolded proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum, which initiates the Unfolded Protein Response (UPR), leading to a change in…

Iowa State University AMES, Iowa – Plant scientists at Iowa State University have completed a new study that describes the genetic pathways at work when corn plants respond to stress brought on by heat, a step that could lead to crops better capable of withstanding stress. The findings, published…

Üstün  et al. show that pathogenic Pseudomonas enhances the autophagic turnover of proteins in Arabidopsis https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.17.00815. By Suayib Üstün and Daniel Hofius Background: Autophagy and the proteasome are the major pathways for protein degradation in eukaryotes. While the…

Adamowski et al. use CRISPR to investigate the function of plant auxilin proteins https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.17.00785. By Maciek Adamowski Background: Endocytosis is one of the basic pathways of cellular trafficking. By endocytosis, proteins located in the plasma membranes, for instance receptors,…

By Rumen Ivanov and David G. Robinson Our knowledge of vacuole biogenesis and the transport of proteins to the vacuole has advanced consistently over the last 30 years. In meristematic cells, the tonoplast appears to develop directly out of the endoplasmic reticulum (Viotti et al., 2013). Once it is…