Recent Posts

Convergent evolution of effector protease recognition by Arabidopsis and barley (bioRxiv)

Pathogenic bacteria Pseudomonas syringae produce an effector protein, AvrPphB. The indirect interaction between this bacterial effector and the Arabidopsis resistance (R) protein RPS5 has been characterized previously; AvrPphB is a cysteine protease that targets another plant protein, PBS1, causing it…

Aquatic fern genomes provide insight into land plant evolution and symbiosis (Nature Plants)

Land plants evolved from freshwater charophytic algae over ~450 million years ago and have since diverged into the plethora of embryophyte genera that we see today. Genomics efforts have classically focused on key angiosperm species representing experimental model systems and/or agriculturally important…

Gender Identity in Kiwifruit

Akagi et al. identify a gender determining gene in kiwifruit. The Plant Cell (2018). https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.17.00787 By T. Akagi, I. M. Henry, H. Ohtani, T. Morimoto, K. Beppu, I. Kataoka, and R. Tao Background: In flowering plants, hermaphroditism, or the presence of both male and female…

Of puzzles and pavements: a quantitative exploration of leaf epidermal cell shape (bioRxiv)

Arabidopsis plants have epidermal pavement cells (the cells that make up the bulk of the epidermis, other than guard cells or trichomes) that are often described as “jigsaw puzzle” shaped, and, because Arabidopsis is such a useful model organism, we have nice models for how these distinctive shapes…

Chen Mingsheng's research team found an evolutionary trend of genes fleeing the centromere region

Article source: http://theworldseeds.cn/index.php?p=152804 (Translated by Google Translate) The centromere and its surroundings are the fastest-evolving and most complex areas of the plant genome. The centromere and near centromere regions not only undergo rapid sequence changes and structural remodeling,…

A 5-enolpyruvylshikimate 3-phosphate synthase functions as a transcriptional repressor in Populus

Here’s a fascinating story; starting with an association study, Xie et al. found that a protein previously identified as an enzyme involved in phenylpropanoid metabolism (specifically, 5-enolpyruvylshikimate 3-phosphate synthase, EPSP) also acts as a transcriptional regulator of this pathway, not only…

Regulatory Divergence in the Stress Response of Tomato

Humans have domesticated crops for thousand of years by artificially selecting plants for numerous traits including morphology, lower toxicity or higher yield. As a result, plant domestication often altered plant fitness and resistance to stress under controlled conditions (Meyer & Purugganan 2013).…

Is Genetic Evolution Predictable?

How often does evolution repeat itself? When the same evolutionary strategy arises multiple times, how often are these strategies built on the same genetic foundations? Addressing this question allows us to understand the relative roles of constraint and contingency in the history of life, but (without…

Strategic seed sourcing will enable species to better adapt to changing environments (eLIFE)

Yellow box, Eucalyptus melliodora, is an iconic Australian tree and foundation species of a critically endangered woodland community that is the target for restoration efforts. This community is currently severely fragmented, and less that 5 % of its original distribution remains. Models of climate prediction…