Matters Arising
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Open Access
Featured
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Matters Arising |
The importance of trait selection in ecology
- Alexandra Weigelt
- , Liesje Mommer
- & M. Luke McCormack
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News Feature |
Invasive palms and WWII damaged an island paradise. Could fungi help to restore it?
Researchers ventured to the world’s most remote island to study how fungi in soils could help to revive damaged ecosystems.
- Virginia Gewin
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Article
| Open AccessA tripartite rheostat controls self-regulated host plant resistance to insects
Insect salivary protein (BISP) targets OsRLCK185 to suppress defence in susceptible plants, whereas in resistant plants BISP binds BPH14 to activate host plant resistance. To restore cellular homeostasis, the resistance mechanism is fine-tuned by selective autophagy.
- Jianping Guo
- , Huiying Wang
- & Guangcun He
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Article |
Genome editing of a rice CDP-DAG synthase confers multipathogen resistance
Editing of a rice gene that has a role in phospholipid synthesis has endowed rice plants with broad-spectrum resistance to disease, including protection from common bacterial and fungal pathogens, without decreasing the yield.
- Gan Sha
- , Peng Sun
- & Guotian Li
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Research Briefing |
Rice gene tamed using genome editing
Genes in agricultural crops are usually fine-tuned through long periods of evolution and crop domestication. In a modern strategy to genetically improve crops, genome editing was used to rapidly develop a variant of a rice gene that shows promise for increasing the plant’s resistance to several diseases.
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News Feature |
Finding the Amazon’s tallest trees — an epic quest to reach hidden giants
When researchers spotted clues that trees were growing to record heights in the rainforest, they tried, failed and tried again to reach the remote site.
- Richard Monastersky
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Article |
Cycles of satellite and transposon evolution in Arabidopsis centromeres
Inter- and intra-species comparison of Arabidopsis centromere variation identifies rapid cycles of transposon invasion and purging through satellite homogenization that drive centromere evolution.
- Piotr Wlodzimierz
- , Fernando A. Rabanal
- & Ian R. Henderson
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Article |
A pan-grass transcriptome reveals patterns of cellular divergence in crops
Complementary single-cell and single-nucleus transcriptomic analyses of Zea mays, Sorghum bicolor and Setaria viridis root cells provide insights into the evolution of cell types and gene modules that control key traits in these important crop species.
- Bruno Guillotin
- , Ramin Rahni
- & Kenneth D. Birnbaum
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Research Highlight |
Old and new cannabis compounds are found in an African herb
A plant used as medicine by South African peoples could be a source of some of the ingredients in the marijuana plant.
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News & Views |
Clues to how water splits during photosynthesis
The tools of crystallography, spectroscopy and quantum chemistry are pulling back the curtain on photosynthesis, probing previously elusive catalytic intermediates that arise when water splits to form oxygen.
- Dimitrios A. Pantazis
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Article
| Open AccessThe electron–proton bottleneck of photosynthetic oxygen evolution
Microsecond infrared spectroscopy together with quantum chemistry reveal the rate-determining proton and electron movements and identify an oxygen-radical state of the manganese cluster as the S4 state.
- Paul Greife
- , Matthias Schönborn
- & Holger Dau
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Comment |
Address the growing urgency of fungal disease in crops
More political and public awareness of the plight of the world’s crops when it comes to fungal disease is crucial to stave off a major threat to global food security.
- Eva Stukenbrock
- & Sarah Gurr
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Article
| Open AccessReducing brassinosteroid signalling enhances grain yield in semi-dwarf wheat
A strategy that depends on attenuated brassinosteroid signalling is described for the design of semi-dwarf wheat varieties with improved grain yield compared with that of green revolution varieties.
- Long Song
- , Jie Liu
- & Zhongfu Ni
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Article |
Export of defensive glucosinolates is key for their accumulation in seeds
Arabidopsis thaliana UMAMIT uniporters facilitate glucosinolate efflux from biosynthetic cells along the electrochemical gradient into the apoplast, in which the high-affinity H+-coupled glucosinolate importers GLUCOSINOLATE TRANSPORTERS (GTRs) load them into the phloem for translocation to the seeds.
- Deyang Xu
- , Niels Christian Holm Sanden
- & Barbara Ann Halkier
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News & Views |
Africa-led group generates lablab crop genome
Lablab is a key crop in the tropics. A high-quality genome sequence for the plant, produced in Kenya, provides insights that could boost breeding programmes and pave the way for more African crops to be sequenced in African laboratories.
- Damaris A. Odeny
- & Molly A. Okoth
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News |
Wheat disease’s global spread concerns researchers
Genomic analysis reveals that the wheat blast fungus spread independently from South America to two other continents.
- Ewen Callaway
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News |
Stressed plants ‘cry’ — and some animals can probably hear them
Microphones capture ultrasonic crackles from plants that are water-deprived or injured.
- Emma Marris
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Technology Feature |
How Latin America’s genomics revolution began — and why the field is under threat
The sequencing of two bacterial species created a legacy that could be at risk without further investment, warn the region’s genomic leaders.
- Carrie Arnold
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Article |
In situ structure of the red algal phycobilisome–PSII–PSI–LHC megacomplex
In situ structures of PBS–PSII–PSI–LHC megacomplexes from the alga P. purpureum at near-atomic resolution using cryogenic-electron tomography and in situ single-particle analysis are reported, providing interaction details between PBS, PSII and PSI.
- Xin You
- , Xing Zhang
- & Sen-Fang Sui
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Article
| Open AccessThe giant diploid faba genome unlocks variation in a global protein crop
Using a high-quality chromosome-scale assembly of the faba bean genome, the genetic basis of seed size and hilum colour is explored.
- Murukarthick Jayakodi
- , Agnieszka A. Golicz
- & Stig Uggerhøj Andersen
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News & Views |
Huge broad-bean genome could improve yields of an underused crop
A high-quality reference genome has been generated for the broad bean (also known as the faba or fava bean). The sequence could be used to identify ways to increase yield, improve pest resistance and more.
- Eric J. B. von Wettberg
- & Azalea Guerra-Garcia
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Research Highlight |
Designer plants churn out antibodies against emerging microbes
Bioengineering technique allows scientists to create plants that can protect themelves from pests and diseases.
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News & Views |
Path unveiled for protein entry into chloroplasts
Structures of the machinery for importing proteins into chloroplast organelles of algae, determined using cryo-electron microscopy, have opened a new chapter in efforts to understand how chloroplasts are built.
- Takashi Hirashima
- & Toshiya Endo
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Article |
Architecture of chloroplast TOC–TIC translocon supercomplex
A cryo-electron microscopy analysis of the Chlamydomonas reinhardtii TOC–TIC supercomplex reveals that Tic214 traverses the chloroplast inner membrane, the intermembrane space and the outer membrane, connecting the TOC complex with the TIC proteins.
- Hao Liu
- , Anjie Li
- & Zhenfeng Liu
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Article
| Open AccessStigma receptors control intraspecies and interspecies barriers in Brassicaceae
A signalling mechanism ensuring intraspecies and interspecies reproductive barriers in flowering plants is uncovered.
- Jiabao Huang
- , Lin Yang
- & Qiaohong Duan
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News & Views |
From the archive: growing seeds by moonlight, and a shower of stars at sea
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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Comment |
Indigenous knowledge is key to sustainable food systems
Agricultural sciences have for too long ignored traditional and local knowledge about crop plants and how best to grow them. That must change if the world is to ensure future food security.
- Alexandre Antonelli
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News & Views |
From the archive: biological clocks, and a pollen puzzle about flies
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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Article |
NLR surveillance of pathogen interference with hormone receptors induces immunity
The tomato spotted wilt orthotospovirus nonstructural protein NSs interferes with phytohormone signalling in plants to compromise plant defences by interacting with plant TCP21—this effect of the viral protein is counteracted by the plant NLR immune receptor protein Tsw.
- Jing Chen
- , Yanxiao Zhao
- & Xiaorong Tao
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Research Briefing |
An arms race between a plant and a virus
Plants have immune systems that defend them against various disease-causing microbes. One virus targets plant hormone receptors to help it to infect plants. As a defence, a plant has evolved an immune receptor that mimics hormone receptors, recognizes a virus-encoded protein and triggers immune defences.
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News & Views |
How plant roots go with the flow
How do environmental cues steer the branching of plant roots? Insights into how water availability shapes root growth reveal an unexpected mechanism behind the hormone-mediated regulation of this process.
- Christa Testerink
- & Jasper Lamers
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News & Views |
Herbivores drive scarcity of some nitrogen-fixing tropical trees
In mature tropical forests, trees that can capture nitrogen experience high levels of herbivory. This could explain the low abundance of such trees, and demonstrates that herbivores can limit nitrogen availability on land.
- Joy B. Winbourne
- & Lindsay A. McCulloch
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Research Highlight |
‘Prisoner’s dilemma’ pinpoints plants that cooperate
Game theory helps to identify genetic variants that give plants the ability to thrive in crowded conditions.
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Career Feature |
Seeding an anti-racist culture at Scotland’s botanical gardens
Botanical gardens are re-examining their collections’ colonial roots — botanists of colour say keep going.
- Linda Nordling
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Research Briefing |
A gene variant in maize that increases protein content
Crops such as maize need nitrogen to create protein, and the yield of many modern crops relies on nitrogen fertilizers. A previously unknown gene variant found in a non-domesticated maize variety enables plants to use nitrogen more efficiently and produce more protein than their modern counterparts.
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Article |
THP9 enhances seed protein content and nitrogen-use efficiency in maize
Genetic analyses of teosinte, the wild ancestor of maize, identify a locus (THP9) that is associated with high seed protein content and increased nitrogen-use efficiency, suggesting that THP9 could have applications in crop breeding.
- Yongcai Huang
- , Haihai Wang
- & Yongrui Wu
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News & Views |
The role of neighbouring species in survival as the climate changes
Predicting the risk of extinction from climate change requires an understanding of the interactions between species. An analysis of how changes in rainfall affect competition between plant species offers a way of tackling this challenge.
- Ellen I. Damschen
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Research Briefing |
How flowering plants compact their sperm DNA
It has not been clear how sperm DNA is compacted in the pollen of flowering plants. Research has now revealed that sperm chromatin, which is a complex of DNA and proteins, is packaged by a special histone protein that spontaneously aggregates in a phenomenon known as phase separation.
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Article
| Open AccessHistone H2B.8 compacts flowering plant sperm through chromatin phase separation
H2B.8 is identified as a histone variant that mediates a newly described mechanism of transcription-compatible chromatin condensation in flowering plant sperm cells.
- Toby Buttress
- , Shengbo He
- & Xiaoqi Feng
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Article |
Adenylate cyclase activity of TIR1/AFB auxin receptors in plants
Adenylate cyclase activity in TIR1/AFB, the canonical auxin receptor, has an essential role in auxin-mediated root growth inhibition in land plants.
- Linlin Qi
- , Mateusz Kwiatkowski
- & Jiří Friml
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Where I Work |
A Jamaican medicinal-plant scientist explores his African roots
Damian Cohall’s studies of traditional medicine have sprouted new ideas for diabetes treatment and cross-Atlantic collaboration.
- Czerne Reid
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News |
Invasive plant species carry legacy of colonialism
The transport of plants worldwide has left once-occupied regions with recognizable patterns of non-native flora.
- Ewen Callaway
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Research Briefing |
Structure of wheat immune receptor helps guide design of disease-resistant varieties
When plants recognize disease-causing organisms, they activate immune responses through mechanisms that are poorly understood. Resolving the structure of a plant receptor-protein complex in wheat that detects fungus-derived molecules reveals that the corresponding receptor family is structurally conserved during evolution.
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Article
| Open AccessA wheat resistosome defines common principles of immune receptor channels
Evolutionary conservation of plant receptor structure allowed for generation of new variants of wheat and barley nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat receptors (NLRs) that recognize AvrSr35 of the wheat stem rust pathogen, supporting proof of principle for structure-based engineering of NLRs for crop improvement.
- Alexander Förderer
- , Ertong Li
- & Jijie Chai
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Article |
Plant receptor-like protein activation by a microbial glycoside hydrolase
A structural analysis focusing on plant immunity reveals how LRR-containing receptor-like proteins recognize pathogenic ligands and consequently become activated, with the data suggesting that these proteins target pathogens through two different mechanisms.
- Yue Sun
- , Yan Wang
- & Jijie Chai
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Article |
Glucose-driven TOR–FIE–PRC2 signalling controls plant development
Glucose signalling via TOR controls growth and differentiation through regulation of genome-wide histone methylation via FERTILIZATION-INDEPENDENT ENDOSPERM (FIE).
- Ruiqiang Ye
- , Meiyue Wang
- & Jen Sheen
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News & Views |
A plant auxin-binding protein resurfaces after a deep dive
The hormone auxin regulates plant growth through nuclear co-receptors. A rapid response also occurs at the cell surface after auxin is perceived by the receptor TMK1 and a co-receptor protein. Is ABP1 this co-receptor?
- Angus S. Murphy
- & Wendy A. Peer
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Article
| Open AccessChiral monoterpenes reveal forest emission mechanisms and drought responses
Analysis of atmospheric data on two enantiomerically separated forms of monoterpene from a controlled drought and rewetting experiment in an enclosed tropical rainforest ecosystem showed distinct diel emission peaks, regulated by different production pathways.
- Joseph Byron
- , Juergen Kreuzwieser
- & Jonathan Williams
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Article |
ABP1–TMK auxin perception for global phosphorylation and auxin canalization
Auxin-binding protein 1 (ABP1) is an auxin receptor that, in complex with transmembrane kinase 1 (TMK1), has a key role in the auxin-induced global phosphorylation of proteins and downstream responses such as vascular regeneration.
- Jiří Friml
- , Michelle Gallei
- & Hana Rakusová
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