Tag: Research methods / tools

The ability to directly sequence RNAs (RNA-seq) has revolutionized our understanding of gene expression, but it can miss or underestimate short-lived RNAs. Several methods have been developed to identify newly-synthesized mRNAs to provide a snapshot of transcription as it happens. Szabo present Neu-seq,…

It seems every other paper shows a nice diagram of a signaling cascade that includes a receptor interacting with its ligand. However, sometimes these diagrams are little more than speculation or guesswork. It’s not always easy to figure out if this interaction is real. Here, Sandoval and Santiago review…

Advances in microscopy have greatly informed our understanding of fundamental plant processes, but the germline cells in flowers have been hard to image as they are tiny and embedded within other tissues. Valuchova et al. present a method using light sheet fluorescence microscopy that allows live cell…

Plant Science Research Weekly: February 14 February 14, 2020/in Blog, WWR Full Post /by Mary Williams Review: Deep learning for plant genomics and crop improvement One of the goals of plant science is to use the molecular phenotype (genome, transcriptome, proteome) to predict the…

A cybrid is a cytoplasmic hybrid; in other words, a cell or organism in which the cytosolic genomes (mitochondria and plastid) have a different origin than the nuclear genome; the nuclear genome is inherited solely from the paternal parent, and the cytosolic genomes from the maternal parent. Starting…

Advances in microscopy allow biologists to document and understand phenotypic changes at the tissue level. Despite this advancement, analysis of microscopic images to characterize changes in phenotypes is still under development. In this paper, Wolny et al. have developed an image analysis tool PlantSeg…

Lycophytes, including the model species Selaginella moellendorffii, are extant (still alive today) seedless vascular plants that were particularly abundant around 400-300 million years ago (and major contributors to the formation of coal). To further understand the biology of some of these oldest extant…

Auxins participate in nearly every aspect of plants' life cycle, but the information about the actual distribution of this hormone is scarce. The location of the hormone has been inferred using reporters based on auxin-transcriptional responses or auxin-dependent degradation signals. For a direct visualization,…