Recent Posts

Plant Cell Focus Issue on climate change and plant abiotic stress biology

The January 2023 issue of The Plant Cell includes a focus issue on “Climate change and plant stress: From genes to ecosystems”. This timely focus issue has in it commentaries, reviews, and research articles on the topic. I particularly enjoyed reading the two reviews that include short perspectives…

Hormone distribution via hydraulic flux determines root branching

Climate change affects rain patterns and hydrological cycles all over the world, exacerbating water scarcity issues. Root branching is altered by local spatial differences in soil moisture. Indeed, when root tips temporarily lose contact with moisture, root branching stops until the appropriate moisture…

Simulated climate warming decreases fruit number but increases seed mass

There is a growing number of studies showing the effects of rising temperatures on different aspects of plant life cycles and ecological dynamics. However, little is known about how a warmer world would affect plants' reproductive performance; in other words, how many resources they invest in reproduction…

Two decades of climate change alters seed longevity in an alpine herb (Alp. Res.)

Alpine ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to climate change since they are experiencing swift temperature increases and rainfall reduction. These changes have been shown to affect different aspects of plant life history, such as phenology and germination. In this exciting research, White and colleagues…

New Teaching Tool, “The Floral Transition and Adaptation to a Changing Environment: from Model Species to Cereal Crops"

Meet the newest member of the Teaching Tools in Plant Biology family, The Floral Transition and Adaptation to a Changing Environment: from Model Species to Cereal Crops, by Michela Osnato. Freely available in the November 2022 issue of The Plant Cell. You can download the resources here, from the supplemental…

Drought-induced civil conflict among the ancient Maya (Nature Comms)

The observation that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” (attributed to philosopher George Santayana) is quite relevant for our efforts to comprehend the impacts of climate change. As we observe temperature and rainfall records being broken with increasing frequency,…

The chloroplast protein biogenesis network at the ribosome during heat acclimation

By Raphael Tröscha, Fabian Riesb, Lisa Désirée Westrichb, Felix Willmundb, a Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, Am Mühlenberg 1, 14476 Potsdam-Golm, Germany; b Molecular Genetics of Eukaryotes, University of Kaiserslautern, Paul-Ehrlich-Str. 23, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany Trösch,…

High temperature and heredity

Joke De Jaeger-Braet & Arp Schnittger, Institute of Plant Science and Microbiology, Department of Developmental Biology, University of Hamburg, Germany De Jaeger-Braet and colleagues explore the effects of high temperatures on meiotic recombination in Arabidopsis. Background: One of the hidden,…

Plantae Presents Panel: Evo-devo as a discovery tool

Plantae Presents - Evo-devo. What can we learn from comparative studies? Recorded Wednesday, October 28 - 10 am EDT We're pleased to announce the second in our series of webinars that are drawn from contributed short videos, followed by a panel discussion. This week we'll look at the topic of…