Recent Posts

UFO helps LEAFY find new promoter elements

Floral development has been the object of decades of plant research, yet many fundamental questions remain. One of these is the mechanism by which LEAFY (LFY), the master transcription factor of floral development, works with UNUSUAL FLORAL ORGANS (UFO), an F-box protein, to regulate petal and stamen…

Prediction of gene responses to heat and cold stress in maize

Zhou and colleagues dissect the transcriptional response of maize seedlings to cold and heat stress and explore to what extent gene expression can be predicted from cis-regulatory motifs in promoters by employing machine learning approaches By Peng Zhou, University of Minnesota Background: Plants…

Cotton fibers: longer, and more of them

Wang et al. identify a WRKY-type transcription factor as being critical to fiber development and elongation in cotton. By Na-Na Wang, Yang Li, Yi-Hao Chen, Rui Lu, Li Zhou, Yao Wang,Yong Zheng, Xue-Bao Li Background: Cotton, one of the most important crops in the world, produces natural fiber materials…