Tag: Physiology

Root architecture and anatomy contribute to water uptake efficiency and plant performance under water-limitation. Prince et al. explored root anatomy in a panel of soybean, and identified metaxylem number as a key trait influencing performance under water-limiting conditions. Increases in metaxylem number…

Legume nodules fix N, but their function has a high requirement for P, making nitrogen-fixation highly sensitive to P deficiency. Valentine et al. review how P limitation affects nodule function and also how nodules respond and adapt to P deficiency, drawing largely on studies of Virgilia divaricata,…

As a consequence of their ability to fix nitrogen in symbiosis with bacteria, legumes make key contributions to ecosystems and provide protein-rich foods for humans and other animals. Recent years have uncovered the nature of the signals involved in the cross-kingdom dialogues that occur between plant…

Chlorophyll has an aliphatic phytol side chain that anchors it to light-harvesting complexes. During senescence, chlorophyll is degraded first by the enzymatic removal of Mg to produce pheophytin, which is dephytlated by pheophytinase. Through the identification of a mutant allele with elevated enzymatic…

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…

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…

HAK5 is a high-affinity potassium transporter that is transcriptionally repressed in high K+ conditions. Zhao et al. identified hormone-related cis-elements in the HAK5 promoter. They screened mutants deficient in transcription factors associated with these cis-elements and found that arf2 mutants show…

Rubisco (Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase / oxygenase) is the enzyme responsible for fixing almost all inorganic carbon into organic form, but it is not optimized for current conditions. As temperature and CO2 levels increase, there is an opportunity to increase photosynthetic efficiency by engineering…