Review: Applications of CRISPR–Cas in agriculture and plant biotechnology (Nature Rev. Mol. Cell Biol.)
Plant Science Research WeeklyThis week’s announcement of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry being awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna “for the development of a method for genome editing” comes as no surprise to many. CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats)– Cas (CRISPR-associated…
Haplotype-resolved genome analyses of a heterozygous diploid potato (Nature Genetics)
Plant Science Research WeeklyPotato (Solanum tuberosum) is the third most important food crop worldwide. It is also a clonally propagated tetraploid, making progress in breeding genetically improved cultivars extremely difficult. Therefore, there are ongoing efforts to redomesticate potato from a tetraploid, tuber-propagated crop…
Root angle modifications by the DRO1 homolog improve rice yields in saline paddy fields (PNAS)
Plant Science Research WeeklyThe spatial configuration of roots is a complex and critical trait for productivity that is impacted by abiotic stresses such as drought, waterlogging, and salinity. Soil salinity is expected to affect 50% of agricultural land worldwide by 2050. This research describes that the loss of function of qSOR1…
Multiple QTL mapping in autopolyploids: A random-effect model approach with application in a hexaploid sweetpotato full-sib population (Genetics)
Plant Science Research WeeklyGene mapping and QTL identification for the improvement of important traits have not been fully explored in an autopolyploid species like sweetpotatoes (2n=6x=90) due to its genetic complexity. Most sweet potato QTL mapping efforts have relied on models used for diploid species, leading to low density…
BonnMu: a sequence-indexed resource of transposon-induced maize mutations for functional genomics studies (Plant Physiol.)
Plant Science Research WeeklyLoss-of-function mutants have been invaluable tools in the geneticist’s toolbox for more than a century. More recently, libraries have been developed of knockout insertion mutants at known sites. Here, a new Mu-transposon insertion sequence-indexed maize resource is described. This new collection,…
A constitutively monomeric UVR8 photoreceptor allele confers enhanced UV-B photomorphogenesis (bioRxiv)
Plant Science Research WeeklyIn response to UV-B light, the plant UV-B photoreceptor UV RESISTANCE LOCUS 8 (UVR8) monomerizes and activates, inducing UV-B acclimation and survival. Re-dimerization by REPRESSOR OF UV-B PHOTOMORPHOGENESIS 1 (RUP1) and RUP2 inactivates UVR8. In order to further clarify UVR8 pathway regulation, Podolec…
Lipid distribution in cuticles affects flower architecture in Medicago (Plant Physiol.)
Plant Science Research WeeklyFloral architecture influences pollination and reproduction: open flowers facilitate cross-pollination, while closed flowers limit outcross. Some plants of the Leguminosae family (i.e., members of the Papilionoideae subfamily that includes soybean, pea, medicago, lotus) possess a complex architecture,…
Variation in maize chlorophyll biosynthesis alters plant architecture (Plant Physiol)
Plant Science Research WeeklyThis is an interesting paper that combines classical genetics with biochemistry and phenotypic analysis. Khangura et al. looked at maize lines with various allelic combinations of two loci that affect chlorophyll biosynthesis: the oil yellow1 (oy1) gene encodes magnesium chelatase, the first committed…
An inducible genome editing system for plants (Nature Plants)
Plant Science Research WeeklyTo understand gene function, it is necessary to study loss-of-function phenotypes. However, knockouts of some genes are lethal, which makes it impossible to study their loss-of-function phenotype. Although here are inducible overexpression systems and inducible knockdown systems, as yet there has been…