Articles in 2018

Plant nutrient-uptake involves the growth and maintenance of viable root hairs that are flexible but resistant to soil hardening, water content variability and pathogen attack. A role for phosphoinositides establishing polarity and structural hardening of the cell wall is now defined, linking lipid signalling and membrane trafficking to cellular morphology.

Plant science, like all specialist disciplines, has its own particular language. But when this lexicon is used in other contexts, we may find words do not mean what we think they do.

The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation requires 75% of threatened plant species conserved ex situ by 2020. Currently, ex situ conservation focuses on conventional seed banking, yet this method is unsuitable for many threatened species. The 75% target is unattainable without urgent investment into alternative techniques.

Chromosome-scale assemblies are quickly becoming the standard for high-quality de novo reference plant genomes. Combining nanopore technology sequencing and optical map information is one way to achieve this.

The insidious control over farming practices exercised by seed companies is an example of how powerful actors in the agri-food system promote profit over environment and health. More important, is the question of how we can shape a more desirable farming system that works for farmers, the public and the environment.

This Review summarizes the current knowledge about local intercellular and systemic RNA trafficking, discussing the potential regulatory mechanisms and biological significance of these processes in plants.

Assembling genomes to chromosome scale remains a challenge. Now, a study reports a strategy based on nanopore long reads and optical maps and uses it to produce high-quality chromosome-scale assemblies for the genomes of yellow sarson, broccoli and banana.

Root hairs are frequently used to study tip growth in plants. Most of the research was focused on the polarized tip region. Now, a mechanism involving PtdIns(4,5)P₂ and a plant-specific Rho-GTPase is proposed to be required for hardening the shank of growing root hairs.

Nitrogen deficiency can lead to severe senescence and harvest losses. The regulatory mechanism depends on the NAC-domain-containing transcription factor ORE1. Now researchers have elucidated the critical post-translational pathway that regulates the protein levels of ORE1.

Domestication of the citrus family has resulted in the selection of key alleles of a duplicated MYB transcription factor called Ruby.

Leaf senescence plays a crucial role in nutrient recovery in late-stage plant development and requires vast transcriptional reprogramming by transcription factors such as ORESARA1 (ORE1). A proteolytic mechanism is now found to control ORE1 degradation, and thus senescence, during nitrogen starvation.

The supramolecular organization of photosystem I (PSI) in the moss Physcomitrella patens is elucidated by single-particle cryo-electron microscopy, showing its structural organization is different from either Chlamydomonas reinhardtii or Arabidopsis thaliana.

The organization of photosystem I from the moss P. patens was studied under different light and carbon supply conditions. Different supercomplexes are formed under these conditions controlled by the light-harvesting complex LHCB9 protein subunit.

RNA polymerase II (Pol II) catalyses the transcription of DNA in the nucleus eukaryotic cells. Now two approaches, global run-on and native elongating transcript sequencing (initially developed for mammalian cells), are used to determine the transcriptional landscape of Pol II in Arabidopsis. The similarities and differences of Pol II dynamics among various eukaryotes are also analysed.

Primitive, wild and cultivated citrus have different abilities in synthesizing anthocyanins. The subfunctionalization of the Ruby2–Ruby1 cluster contributes to the variation and evolution of the anthocyanin biosynthesis regulation in citrus.