Tag: Research Methods and Tools

Abscisic acid (ABA) is known as stress hormone. Apart from its role in plant growth and development, it is widely studied due to its involvement in biotic and abiotic stresses. Although it had been studied for such a long time, a sensitive spatiotemporal marker for ABA is still elusive. Wu et al. developed…

One of the most exciting findings in the past few decades is the discovery that individual mRNAs and noncoding RNAs can act as long-distance signaling messengers traveling cell to cell to distant sites in the plant. Numerous examples unveiled the involvement of endogenous RNAs as non-cell-autonomous…

The circadian clock is an endogenous timekeeper that synchronizes essential biological processes with the outside world. Eukaryotic clocks rely on the ubiquitin proteasome system to target core clock factors for degradation. Altering clock protein degradation can change the period length of the clock.…

Wiedemann et al. show that RecQ6 in Physcomitrella enhances homologous recombination and gene targeting https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.17.00632.  Background: All living cells have mechanisms to protect their DNA against breaks during duplication and against damage by UV-light or chemicals. RecQ helicases…

Phytohormones are naturally occurring signaling molecules that play key roles in the regulation of plant physiology, development, and adaptation to environmental stimuli. Generally, their concentrations in plant tissues are extremely low (fmol-pmol/g fresh weight, FW). Although certain phytohormones…

A protein’s function and localization are often studied by fusing to it a small “tag” to enhance visualization (through the tag’s fluorescence or antibodies that recognize the tag). These tags are often assumed to have little effect on the protein of interest, but as Hurst et al. show using several…

High-throughput plant phenotyping systems are an excellent tool for analyzing large plant populations, providing better understanding of plant growth, productivity and performance under stress conditions. Unfortunately, high-throughput platforms are also high on costs and limited in their adaptability…

Soft X-ray imaging is a promising new technology that can be used to measure elemental compositions of living cells. By adjusting the energy (wavelength) of the incident X-rays, it is possible to specifically measure C or N, which have different photo-absorption edges.  Teramoto et al. demonstrate the…