Recent Posts

Genome-Wide Analysis of Temperature-Induced Fatty Acid Desaturation

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Biogeographic studies suggest that the degree of fatty acid unsaturation in oilseeds has played a major role in adapting plants to temperature. The enzymes that are primarily responsible for producing polyunsaturated fatty acids in seed oils are the microsomal ω-6 and ω-3 fatty acid desaturases FAD2…

High levels of antioxidants correlate with leaf growth in drought tolerant maize

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Drought tolerance is a complex trait, and Avramova et al. show that there is more than one way to be drought tolerant. Specifically, they investigate the role of antioxidants in supporting leaf growth in several varieties of drought tolerant maize. As compared to the tolerant lines, drought sensitive…

Photosynthetic trichomes contain a specific Rubisco with a modified pH-dependent activity

Rubisco (Ribulose-1,5-biphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase) is the key enzyme in photosynthetic carbon fixation. In C3 plants, the enzyme is usually found in mesophyll cells and guard cells, but it also can be found in photosynthetic glandular trichomes such as those found in tobacco. Laterre et al. used…

Review: The increasing impact of activity-based protein profiling in plant science

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Activity-based protein profiling is a proteomics approach that involves covalently labeling reporter tags to subsets of proteins based on their active sites. Morimoto and van der Hoorn define different types of probes and the types of proteins that they bind to. Activity profiling can reveal different…

Genome-wide prediction of metabolic enzymes, pathways and gene clusters in plants

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A considerable knowledge gap remains between the plant genome and the plant metabolome. To address this, Schläpfer et al. have developed a computational pipeline to identify metabolic enzymes, pathways, and gene clusters. Although metabolic genes are known to cluster in bacteria and fungi, until recently…

Technical Advance: Distribution of thylakoid membrane lipids among individual cells of maize leaf ($)

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The distribution of metabolites in tissues can be determined in situ through the technique Mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) with matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI) (also known as MALDI-MSI). Duenas et al. used MALDI-MSI to analyze the distribution of thylakoid membrane lipids in maize,…

Review: The cryptic chemical traits that mediate plant community composition

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Plants produce a huge variety of specialized metabolites, many with roles in defense. Metabolic profiles rarely follow phylogenetic lines; in fact, closely related species often produce dramatically different suites of metabolites. When it comes to defense chemistry, it is advantageous to be different…

Update: Stomatal biology of CAM plants

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Crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) plants open their stomata at night, decreasing water loss and increasing water-use efficiency as well as drought tolerance. Males and Griffiths review the stomatal biology of CAM plants as compared to C3 plants. For example, CAM stomata are relatively insensitive to…

Review: Winter and summer dormancy: similar adaptive strategies?

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Dormancy (growth arrest) is a state by which seeds and plants can survive harsh conditions. Seasonal dormancy is a strategy to survive seasonally unfavorable conditions. Plants can display winter and summer dormancy. Although woody species are the main study systems for winter dormancy, herbaceous species…