Recent Posts

Review: Nicotiana benthamiana: a workhorse of model plants (Annu Rev Phytopathol)

For years, scientists have relied on model species to investigate the fundamental nature of plants. Not surprisingly, these systems have facilitated our combined efforts for a deeper understanding of complex plant phenomena, from the coordinated orchestration of developmental programs to the emerging…

Experimental Reproducibility 101 (Part 3)

This article, by Benjamin Schwessinger and Sonali Roy, is the third of three and is based on a workshop called “Reproducibility for all” presented at PlantBio18 by Benjamin Schwessinger, Sonali Roy, and Lenny Teytelman. In Part 1 (here), the authors describe the importance of having a data management…

A synthetic oxygen sensing device for plants

Plants can die from a lack of oxygen (hypoxia), which contributes to the devastating losses caused by flooding. Iacopino et al. set out to develop a more specific method for detecting oxygen levels in plants, based on the mammalian Hypoxia Inducible transcription Factor HIF.  HIF is hydroxylated by…

Quantitative imaging to investigate regulators of membrane trafficking in Arabidopsis stomatal closure ($) Traffic

Properly functioning guard cells change size in response to myriad stimuli to control the passage of water and gasses through stomata. The change in volume is mirrored by changes in plasma membrane surface area, with membrane moving dynamically between tonoplast and plasma membrane as needed. Bourdais…

Editorial. Counting what counts: quantitative approaches in plant cell biology (COPB)

In the new Cell Biology issue of Current Opinion in Plant Biology, editors Haswell and Dixit have chosen to focus on quantitative cell biology, arguing that, “if seeing is believing, then measuring is knowing.” Topics of the issue's reviews span parts of the cell (including cell wall, cytoskeleton,…

Finding candidate genes in maize with Camoco (Plant Cell)

Schaefer and colleagues have developed Camoco (Co-analysis of molecular components), which integrates data from GWAS and co-expression networks to identify high confidence candidate genes associated with a phenotype of interest. To evaluate the program they used GWAS and co-expression data from maize.…

Review: Single-particle tracking for the quantification of membrane protein dynamics in living plant cells (Mol. Plant)

Real-time tracking is a hugely powerful way to understand the behaviour of single proteins. Cui et al. review the methods and applications of single-particle tracking (SPT) in plant cells. They describe the applications of variable-angle total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy (VA-TIRFM) to…

Review. Review. Functional phenomics: An emerging field integrating high-throughput phenotyping, physiology, and bioinformatics (J. Exp. Bot)

Understanding the processes contributing to plant productivity will help to secure food production in the future. Larry York proposes how this can be achieved using functional phenomics. First the ideotype needs to be constructed; the ideotype is a set of phene states that are hypothesized to enhance…

Manipulation and sensing of auxin metabolism, transport and signaling ($) (Plant Cell Physiol)

Auxin is involved in a diverse array of developmental processes as well as biotic and abiotic stress responses. The chemical–genetic approach is a powerful tool to decipher the auxin signaling pathway. In this review, Fukui and Hayashi have provided a comprehensive overview about the structure, molecular…