Tag: Development

A seedling in the dark produces ethylene, which in a dicot such as Arabidopsis leads to apical hook formation that protects the cotyledons from damage as the seedling pushes through the soil. The emergence of the seedling into the soil causes a rapid transition to photomorphogenesis and a suppression…

Seed vitality is critical for plants’ evolutionary survival and food production by economic crops such as rice, wheat, etc. Seed formation is preceded by well-coordinated events involving mainly fertilization, endosperm and seed coat formation in chronological order. How is the signal relayed from…

Youssef et al. investigate how the vsr2 mutant affects inflorescence (spike) development in barley. In the two-row variety, at each node there are two sterile spikelets and a single grain forms. In the six-row variety, each of the spikelets is fertile and three grains form at each node. The vsr2 mutation…

Programmed cell death (PCD) is an active process that occurs as part of normal development and also contributes to defense against pathogens. While there are many similarities in developmental PCD (dPCD) and pathogen-triggered PCD (pPCD), there are also differences. Huysmans et al. review and contrast…

IN BRIEF by Nancy Hofmann [email protected] The ability to generate transgenic plants without regard to cultivar or genotype can be considered a holy grail of cereal crop transformation. Despite years of effort, it has been remarkably difficult to develop efficient methods for transformation of…

IN BRIEF by Jennifer Lockhart [email protected] When a deer eats the primary shoot of a plant, this can activate a nearby dormant axillary bud, causing it to form a secondary shoot. Genetic and environmental factors also affect shoot architecture, which strongly influences crop productivity. Changes…