Tag: Research Methods and Tools

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,…

Diatoms are photosynthetic eukaryotes and contribute substantially to global carbon fixation. They are distantly related to green plants, having shared the same primary endosymbiotic event, although they subsequently underwent additional secondary endosymbioses. There are over 100,000 species of diatoms,…

Genome editing through CRISPR/Cas9 holds so much promise for plant breeders, including potentially the ability to overcome the public’s displeasure with conventional GMOs. Still, the gene-editing RNAs and enzymes must get into the plant cell in order to work. Banakar et al. have compared three methods…

Biosensors have provided abundant information about the distribution of target enzymes, for example auxin, revealing much about their roles in plant physiology and development. Ethylene is a tiny (C2H4) gaseous hormone that hasn’t been very amenable to the development of biosensors. Here, Vong et al.…

Protein-protein interactions modulate the activities of many proteins, i.e., the signaling specificity of Receptor-like kinases (RLK). Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) allows the study of the dynamics of protein-protein interactions in live plants; this technique is based on energy transfer…

A fast method of gene editing using Agrobacterium was developed to deliver combinations of the developmental regulators including WUSCHEL and SHOOT MERISTEMLESS along with gene-editing reagents. The expression of specific developmental regulators led to the induction of meristems and expression of the…

In the middle part of the 20th century, cell biology leapt forward with the development of differential centrifugation methods for purifying subcellular compartments. However, these methods require large amounts of starting material and can suffer from contamination. Kuhnert et al. present a new simple…

Transgenic plant production often involves an agar-based selection step in which plants that have taken up the introduced DNA (containing a selectable marker) show resistance to a corresponding antibiotic. Typically, putatively transformed seeds are surface sterilized prior to plating so that microbes…