Tag: Gene Regulation

Animals and plants have divergent sets of blue light receptors, called Cryptochromes. However, green alga Chlamydomonas has both animal-like and plant cryptochrome (pCRY). The presence of multiple cryptochrome suggests specific roles in different pathways in respective organisms. In this paper, Müller…

Gene expression is regulated at multiple levels such as genome, transcription, RNA processing and nuclear export, translation, and post-translation. Functional mRNA levels are regulated at transcription stage where RNA polymerase II (RNAPII) controls initiation and elongation of mRNA. In particular,…

Liu et al. uncover a direct link between calcium signaling and a plant immune receptor http://www.plantcell.org/content/29/4/746.abstract Plants have evolved a sophisticated system to defend against pathogen attack that involves recognition of an invading pathogen and activation of the immune system.…

Gallegos and Rose investigate how introns affect transcript initiation http://www.plantcell.org/content/29/4/843.abstract. For the information stored in the DNA of genes to be converted into functional protein products, first a molecular copy of the information called messenger RNA is made, using…

Antosz et al. provide insight into the complex process of transcription elongation by RNA polymerase II http://www.plantcell.org/content/29/4/854.abstract The genetic blueprint for the production of proteins is stored in the DNA of a plant cell. In a first step, the enzyme RNA polymerase II generates…

Kidokoro et al. investigate how plants sense cold and activate cold tolerance http://www.plantcell.org/content/29/4/760.abstract. Cold stress can be just as lethal as heat stress. When a cell freezes, the water inside it expands as it turns to ice. This can cause the cell membrane to rupture and lead…

Sun et al. observed that under dehydration stress, many genes showed a 3′ untranslated region (3′ UTR) extension of roughly 200 – 800 nucleotides. The outcome of these extensions appears to be the regulation of other genes. For example, through their extension, many (more than 600) of the extended…

The interactions with microRNAs (miRNAs) and their targets in plants is assumed to be dependent largely on complementarity between the two RNAs. Zheng et al. investigated the interactions between miR159 and its putative targets, mRNA of several MYB genes, each with similar complementarity to the miRNA.…