Tag: Genomics

Biotrophic phytopathogens manipulate living hosts for the procurement of nutrients essential for growth and reproduction. It is therefore critical for invading biotrophs to evade or suppress immune responses without impacting overall plant function. In a recent study published in New Phytologist (2019),…

It’s January, which seems to be a month of weather extremes for many “temperate” parts of the globe. Here’s an excellent collection to curl up with as you try to stay warm or cool and out of the elements. The issue includes free-to-access reviews focused on using genomic data (e.g., genome-wide…

Sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) is an important oil-producing crop, which was domisticated in North America about 4000 years ago with elite varities being developed through the 19th and 20th centuries, narrowing its genetic variation. It retains the ability to hybridize with wild relatives, providing…

LEA genes were first identified as being highly abundant during seed desiccation (hence their name), but later were also shown to accumulate in other tissues in response to drought stress, and to confer desiccation tolerance in “resurrection plants”. These small proteins are characterized by having…

Schaefer and colleagues have developed Camoco (Co-analysis of molecular components), which integrates data from GWAS and co-expression networks to identify high confidence candidate genes associated with a phenotype of interest. To evaluate the program they used GWAS and co-expression data from maize.…

Rice (Oryza sativa) is derived from breeding of perennial wild ancestors with long stalks and few seeds to short plants with enlarged panicles (inflorescences). Many known domestication changes are due to changes in transcription factors or modulation of enzymatic actions. Recent work by Swetha et al.…

Desiccation tolerance is the property of being able to survive and recover from extreme dehydration. Although there are many desiccation-tolerant plant species, efforts to identify the genetic basis of desiccation tolerance have been limited by a lack of closely-related desiccation sensitive species.…

Expansion of plant genomes is thought to be linked to massive bursts of transposable elements activity. This implies consequences on the distribution of epigenetic modifications required for the silencing of the causative transposons. Consequences of transposon bursts have been extensively described…