Recent Posts

Chlamydomonas photoreceptor gene editing by zinc-finger nucleases and CRISPR/Cas9

New genome editing technology, such as zinc-finger nucleases and CRISPR/Cas9, are revolutionizing reverse genetics studies because they allow fast and precise genetic modifications in many species. However, they require efficient transformation and selection methods. This is notably a problem for algae…

Tomato Genome Goes Nano

Schmidt et al. demonstrate that nanopore technology can be applied to plant genomes https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.17.00521 By Schmidt, M. H.-W., Vogel, A., Denton, A. K., Bolger, A. M., Bolger, M. E., and Usadel, B. Background: An organism’s genome contains all the necessary information for its…

Review: DNA sequencing at 40: past, present and future ($)

Shendure et al. provide a superb review of how DNA sequencing technology has changed over the years and how these changes open up new applications. They start with the Maxam and Gilbert chemical cleavage and the Sanger “chain-termination” methods developed in the 1970s, and describe the scale-ups…

De novo assembly of a new Solanum pennellii accession using nanopore sequencing

Chromosomes are long, and DNA sequencing reads have typically been short, meaning that it is necessary to assemble lots and lots of short reads by looking for overlapping sequences. This strategy is made more difficult in repeat-rich and transposon-rich regions of genomes, which characterize many plant…

Expression and purification of unstable proteins using an ASK-assisted system

Ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation is important in many plant processes (growth, development, responses to stress) but little is known about F-box proteins, a key component of the SCF (SKP1-CUL1-F-box protein) E3 ubiquitin ligase complex, due to their unstable protein structures. Li et al. investigated…

Improving crops by genome editing

Introducing new desirable traits in domesticated crops takes time and is limited by the need for existing trait variation in members of the same species or closely related species. Rodríguez-Leal et al. propose a system by which variation in a quantitative trait can be generated by editing the promoter…

In vivo gibberellin gradients visualized in rapidly elongating tissues

Biosensors can reveal cellular or even sub-cellular distributions of hormones, greatly enhancing our understanding of hormone action. Rizza et al. have developed an in vivo, FRET-based gibberellin biosensor, GIBBERELLIN PERCEPTION SENSOR 1 (GPS1), that incorporates portions of two GA-binding proteins,…

Imaging of Light Absorption and Photosynthesis

Due to its ease of use and noninvasive nature, variable chlorophyll fluorescence techniques have become increasingly popular for estimating photosynthetic parameters. Most measurements of variable chlorophyll fluorescence in complex plant tissues and surface-associated cell assemblages (e.g. biofilms)…

Nuclear transcriptomes at high resolution using retooled INTACT

Reynoso et al. describe the Isolation of Nuclei from TAgged specific Cell Types (INTACT) in rice. In this method, modified from one described previously in Arabidopsis and tomato, nuclei are labeled with a biotinylated nuclear-envelope anchored protein. Best results were obtained when a rice WIP (WPP-Interacting…