Recent Posts

UGT71L1 in Poplar Connects Salicinoid and Salicylic Acid Metabolism

Gordon et al. report that knock-out of a recently discovered enzyme for salicinoid biosynthesis in poplar leads to changes in salicylic acid and jasmonic acid metabolism and has unexpected effects on growth.. Plant Cell https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koac135 By Peter Constabel and Harley Gordon Background:…

Chloroplast redox state changes mark cell-to-cell signalling in the hypersensitive response (New Phytol)

Programmed cell death (PCD) plays roles in both developmental and environmental responses across plant species. During pathogen attack, the hypersensitive response can limit spread of infection by orchestrating an organised death of cells around the infection area. A recent study by Lukan et al. demonstrated…

MED8 keeps H2O2-dependent gene expression under control

He et al. demonstrate that Mediator complex subunits have functions beyond their known roles in transcription. Plant Cell https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koab079 By Huaming He, Patrick Willems, Frank Van Breusegem, and Amna Mhamdi Background: Plants often face challenging environments to which they…

Here, there and everywhere: Plastid- and nuclear-localized WHIRLY1 regulates salicylic acid homeostasis during developmental senescence

Does a new job always come with a new location? Perhaps this is true for some plant proteins; half of the proteins are located in more than one subcellular compartment. Emerging evidence in plants shows that nuclear-encoded proteins undergo redox and posttranslational modifications or processing events…

On how to build a larger and healthier Arabidopsis ROSette using a mitochondrial protein (spoiler: reactive oxygen species)

Javier Edgardo Moreno ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9763-5325 Twitter: @JaviMorenoOK Instituto de Agrobiotecnología del Litoral (UNL-Conicet), Facultad de Bioquímica y Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad Nacional del Litoral Santa Fe 3000, Argentina   Cellular respiration is at the core…

Zones of Defense? SA Receptors Have it Under Control

The constant evolutionary arms race with pathogens has equipped plants with a layered immune system. As the first line of defense, membrane-localized pattern recognition receptors perceive microbe-associated molecular patterns and activate pattern-triggered immunity (PTI). In parallel, R proteins –…

Surprise –salicylic acid receptors can do so much!

Liu et al. investigate the diverse roles of the salicylic acid receptors NPR1, NPR3 and NPR4 in local and long-range plant immunity. The Plant Cell (2020).  https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.20.00499 By Yanan Liu1,2, Tongjun Sun2,3 and Yuelin Zhang2 (1 College of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Hunan Agricultural…