Tag: Signals and Signaling

Host perception is crucial for soil-borne microbes to successfully colonize plant roots. Ding et al. conducted transcriptome analysis of the fungal pathogen Fusarium graminearum (Fg) in the presence of its host plant Brachypodium distachyon (Bd), either without direct contact (precontact) or during colonization.…

Stomata are the pores surrounded by a pair of guard cells on the plant epidermis that help in gaseous exchange. The number and spacing of stomata are regulated by a series of phosphorylation and de-phosphorylation events of key transcription factors through the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK)…

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are essential secondary messengers for rapid transmission of local and long-distance signalling in plants. Respiratory oxidase homologs (RBOHs) are the family of enzymes in plants that produce extracellular ROS, with RBOHD being the primary oxidase in Arabidopsis for ROS…

Potassium ions (K+) play a variety of important roles in plant physiology and are maintained at a high concentration in the cytosol relative to the available K+ in the environment. Potassium may accumulate to an even higher concentration in the vacuole, where it helps to regulate turgor pressure. During…

Cuscuta (dodders) are parasites that survive on other host plants.Liu et al. found more than 1500 proteins are transferred between Cucuta and host plants forming a sort of interplant chemical communication. Furthermore, proteins could move between two hosts that are connected by dodder bridges, and retain…

In multicellular organisms, the patterning of different cell types in spatial arrays is regulated through several mechanisms, one of which is lateral inhibition, a process well characterized in metazoans. In this process, an individual cell transmits signals to neighboring cells to instruct a different…

Parasitic plants develop unique structures called haustoria that penetrate into the host plant vasculature, from which they take nutrients. During this process, haustorial epidermal cells differentiate into specialized cells called intrusive cells, which eventually re-differentiate into a xylem bridge…

What are the chances that homologs of a vital animal protein could be found in plants, and how much structural and functional similarity would they share? These questions led to the discovery of Calcineurin B-like (CBL) and CBL-interacting protein kinase (CIPK) protein families in plants. In this review,…