Tag: Genetics

The transition between vegetative and reproductive stages in the plant life cycle implies a change in the developmental program of the shoot apical meristem to stop developing leaves and start developing floral buds. The factors that allow this transition to happen are many and the underlying mechanisms…

We’ve highlighted some of the Plant Cell papers that were widely shared, liked, blogged, retweeted and otherwise garnered high-levels of attention this year. Perhaps you can use some holiday-season quiet time to catch up on those you missed. Reviews and Perspectives Creating order from chaos: epigenome…

IN BRIEF by Jennifer Lockhart jlockhart@aspb.org Most plants are hermaphrodites, producing perfect flowers with both male and female functions. In roughly 6% of plants, however, male (usually XY) plants produce only male flowers and female (XX) plants produce only female flowers. These dioecious plants…

We’ve highlighted some of the Plant Physiology papers that were widely shared, liked, blogged, retweeted and otherwise garnered high-levels of attention this year. Perhaps you can use some of that holiday-season quiet time to catch up on those you missed. The breakaway attention-getter from Plant…

Slides from the recent CRISPR/Cas workshop held at the GARNet2016 meeting are now available to download. Organized by Vladimir Nekrasov and Amanda Hopes (The Sainsbury Laboratory/University of East Anglia, UK), the workshop title was, "Introduction to CRISPR-Cas, troubleshooting target design…

It has been stated that adaptive evolution occurs in plant populations with respect to various complex traits. Olofsson et al. validated the hypothesis that different components of a complex trait can evolve in isolation and later be combined by gene flow by using C4 photosynthesis as a study system.…

Traditionally, the production of hybrid maize seed involved the removal of male flowers to prevent self-fertilization of the female flowers. Rice produces bisexual flowers, so mechanical emasculation is not as amenable. Therefore, hybrid rice production requires that the female parent be genetically…

Although it is widely accepted that high humidity has a strong influence on plant diseases of the phyllosphere (the above-ground portions of the plant), the molecular basis is not understood.  Xin et al. report that an important step in bacterial infection of the phyllosphere is a pathogen-driven…