Tag: Cell Biology

A plant has many layers of defense against a pathogen. One of the first challenges a pathogen faces is how to get inside the plant. Some bacteria sneak in through open stomatal pores, and some fungi form high-pressure appressoria that burst through walls. Here, Bronkhorst et al. investigated how the…

The question “Are plants intelligent?” is raised regularly, with answer often “Well, it depends how you define intelligence.” Another interesting question is whether or not plants have cellular structures that are analogous to those that make up the animal nervous system. Robinson and Draguhn…

Plants demonstrate a gorgeous diversity in cell types to adapt to their unique environments. Certain cell types, such as the epidermal, cortex, and vascular cells within plant roots, or the classically-defined root developmental zones (meristematic, elongation, and maturation), are homologous in angiosperms.…

Calcium (Ca2+) signaling regulates a host of stress and developmental responses in plants. Apart from increases in cytosolic Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]Cyt.), organellar signals play a key role in shaping the cytosolic signaling events. In an attempt to understand the Ca2+ dynamics in the endoplasmic…

Plasmodesmata, the tubular connections that form continua between neighboring cells in plants, play vital roles in long-distance transport of ions, RNA, proteins, and small molecules. While it is known that plasmodesmata are permeable to phytohormones, including auxin, the physiological significance…

Understanding cellular responses to the phytohormone auxin has always been a challenge and decades of work has constantly renewed our knowledge of the same. Here, Narasimhan and colleagues attempted to revisit and resolve the basis of differential action of naturally occurring auxin indole-3-acetic acid…

Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is a non-protein amino acid produced by animals and plants, but is its function conserved across kingdoms? In mammals, GABA acts as chemical messenger in the central nervous system by inhibiting neurotransmission. In plants, GABA accumulates in response to stress but its…

Autophagy is an intracellular evolutionarily conserved catabolic process that degrades cytoplasmic constituents and organelles in lytic vacuoles (micro- and macro-autophagy) or in the cytosol (mega-autophagy). Autophagy can be induced by biotic or abiotic stresses, sugar, carbon and nutrient starvation…