Tag: Metabolism

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,…

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…

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…

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…

A healthy human diet should include phytonutrients such as carotenoids. Several approaches including classical breeding and transgenic plant production have been used to increase carotenoid abundance in plant tissues; challenges to these approaches include feedback controls, cell toxicity due to abnormally…

Protein synthesis is an energetically-demanding process, made even more so by the fact that many proteins have a short half-life and must be repeatedly synthesized and degraded. Using a 15N-labeling approach, Li et al. determined the in vivo half-life for more than 1200 Arabidopsis leaf proteins; these…

Hypoxia is a condition in which oxygen availability is insuffient to support normal cellular functions. Hypoxia is often associated with stress such as flooding, and responses to hypoxia include increased glycolytic activity and fermentation. Considine et al. review the role lf hypoxia and tissue oxygen…

They say that “chacun à son gout” (each has his own taste), but when it comes to tomatoes there is near universal agreement that they don’t taste as good as they used to: a fact that is borne out by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and the panel of taste-testers employed by Tieman et al. in…