Recent Posts

Rice Panicle Morphogenesis: Intercommunication Between Grain Number and Size

Guo et al. investigate the trade-off between seed number and seed size of rice. Plant Cell (2018) https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.17.00959. By Tao Guo, Ke Chen, Nai-Qian Dong, Chuan-Lin Shi, Wang-Wei Ye, Ji-Ping Gao, Jun-Xiang Shan, Hong-Xuan Lin Background: Rice is one of the main staple cereal crops…

miRNA-Mediated Regulation of Germination

Guo et al. show that miR9678 affects seed germination in wheat by generating phased siRNAs and modulating abscisic acid/gibberellin signaling. Plant Cell https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.17.00842 By Guanghui Guo and Yingyin Yao Background:  Seed germination is important for grain yield and quality…

Gender Identity in Kiwifruit

Akagi et al. identify a gender determining gene in kiwifruit. The Plant Cell (2018). https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.17.00787 By T. Akagi, I. M. Henry, H. Ohtani, T. Morimoto, K. Beppu, I. Kataoka, and R. Tao Background: In flowering plants, hermaphroditism, or the presence of both male and female…

Feedback regulation of COOLAIR expression controls seed dormancy and flowering time ($)

FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC) and FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) are proteins required for seasonal sensing in plants. Specifically, FLC and FT control seed dormancy and flowering time. In the control of flowering time, FLC expression is regulated by the prolonged-cold induction of antisense transcripts at FLC known…

PLANT PROTEIN MEETS HOMER´S TROJAN HORSE

By Karina van der Linde and Virginia Walbot  Background: In contrast to animals in which meiotically competent cells develop in embryos, plants switch from vegetative to reproductive growth only during flowering. In maize, the most productive cereal crop, the tassel contains male flowers in which…

Open Access Shy Girl Gives Kiwifruit Male Flowers

From the human perspective, separate sexes are the norm while hermaphroditism is an exotic concept. For plants, hermaphroditism is the norm. Dioecy, separate male and female individuals, is rare and dispersed in the angiosperm phylogeny (Käfer et al 2017, Renner 2014). In fact, dioecy is rare enough…

The ADAPTOR PROTEIN-3 complex mediates pollen tube growth by coordinating vacuolar targeting and organization (Plant Physiol)

Adaptor proteins (AP) are involved in sorting proteins and are able to recognize cargo and coat proteins during vesicle formation. AP-3 specifically targets protein cargoes to vacuoles. Feng et al. investigate the role of AP-3 in plant reproduction. ap-3 mutants have reduced seed set that is characterized…

What We're Reading: January 5th

Guest Editor:  Alecia Biel Alecia is a graduate student at The Ohio State University in the US and has been a Plantae Fellow since September 2017.  Her research focuses on elucidating hormone signaling pathways and the role of the nucleus during this process, particularly throughout plant abiotic…

The diversity of floral temperature patterns, and their use by pollinators

Bees and other pollinators experience the world in a different way to humans. They use different strategies in order to identify their surroundings, including their preferred flower species. Among these strategies, floral temperature.  These differential “floral warming” happens due to floral thermogenesis…