Recent Posts

Bacterial pathogens deliver water- and solute-permeable channels to plant cells

What do you do when you’ve identified a gene that you know is important, but you don’t know how it functions? Usually, you can get hints from homology searches, overexpression studies, or the identification of protein domains, but sometimes those approaches don’t work. That’s where the story…

Hydraulic failure as a primary driver of xylem network evolution in early vascular plants (Science)

The earliest terrestrial plants had relatively small, simple forms. The evolution of water-conducting cells provided opportunities for increased size. However, water movement by tension (driven by evaporation) can fail when the water column breaks and is blocked by an air bubble called an embolism. Looking…

Review: Deep origin and gradual evolution of transporting tissues: Perspectives from across the land plants (Plant Physiol)

The development of vascular plants (tracheophytes) was a major innovation during the evolution of land plants. The classic view is that the evolution of transporting tissues is distinct to tracheophytes, but Woudenberg and Renema et al. discuss an alternative hypothesis where this was a gradual process…

Crosstalk between phosphate transport and plant immunity (Curr. Biol.)

Plants have evolved signaling cascades to survive biotic and abiotic stresses, and recent studies have shown that there is crosstalk between many of these pathways.  In a recent study, Dindas et al. developed a micro-electrode-based system to detect active inorganic phosphate (Pi) transport in Arabidopsis…

Swapping citrate for malate by plant mitochondria

Lee et al. unravel a mitochondrial transporter responsible for selectively exporting citrate in exchange for malate. Plant Cell (2021) By Chun Pong Leea, Marlene Elsässerb, Philippe Fuchsb,c, Ricarda Fenskea, Markus Schwarzländerb, A. Harvey Millara aARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology,…

STOP1-NRT1.1: a new module to optimize nitrogen and growth in acidic media for plants (Plant Cell)

Acidic soils often negatively impact plant growth, yet the application of fertilizers containing urea or ammonia have the effect of acidifying soils. In a recent paper, Ye and colleagues investigated how nitrate uptake through the nitrate transporter NITRATE TRANSPORTER 1.1 (NRT1.1) can mitigate some…

Review. The Fast and The Furious: Rapid long-range signaling in plants (Plant Physiol)

Plants possess a complex series of local and systemic signaling networks driven by multiple stimuli. They translate this information into plant-wide response to coordinate their physiology and development.  Here, Johns et al. review these communication pathways, which function across different scales…

In vivo single-particle tracking of the aquaporin AtPIP2;1 in stomata reveals cell type-specific dynamics (Plant Physiol)

Bacteria can exploit the stomatal pores to gain entry into plant leaves. Previous studies have demonstrated that guard cells close in response to flagellin, an effect that is described as stomatal immunity. Like ABA-induced stomatal closure, this involves the movements of ions and water from the guard…

NPA directly binds to and inhibits PIN transporters (PNAS)

N-1-naphthylphthalamic acid (NPA) inhibits polar auxin transport (PAT). Though used for over six decades, the precise mechanism by which it inhibits PAT is still unclear. A new study by Abas and colleagues now suggests that NPA directly associates with and inhibits the activity of PIN-FORMED (PIN) transporters.…