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Rubber tree plantations have been displacing tropical forests in Southeast Asia, linked to global rubber prices. Forest-to-plantation conversion in Cambodia is correlated with shifts in rubber prices, with a time lag of under a year, showing the link between global commodity markets and deforestation in developing nations.
A sunflower pan-genome determined by sequencing about 500 accessions, including wild, landrace and cultivated lines, showed that introgression from the wild species has profoundly shaped the cultivar gene pool and contributed disease resistance genes.
The plant vacuole plays important roles in regulating growth and development. Now, the vacuole in Arabidopsis root cells is presented at nanometre resolution by 3D whole-cell tomography, suggesting a cellular mechanism for plant vacuole formation.
Peptides play important roles in plants. Identical CLE9/10 peptides can be perceived by two receptor complexes, depending on the tissue context, during the control of different developmental processes: stomatal lineage and xylem development.
Water content in plants increasing while the surrounding soil moisture decreases, measured through remote sensing on multiple continents, may be suggestive of a pulse–reserve mechanism that has not been observed on a large spatial scale before. This behaviour, triggered or rendered inactive by certain thresholds, is seen in biomes other than arid lands.
Plants develop shoots and roots to access light, carbon dioxide, water and nutrients. Light intensity and quality are suggested to affect root nutrient uptake. Now, the researchers identify a mechanistic link between red light and phosphorus uptake by investigating 200 natural accessions of Arabidopsis.
Proanthocyanidins (PAs) are a class of plant natural products that are involved in plant defence and are also beneficial to human health. Now a new mechanism is discovered to elucidate the origin of PA units and explain the diversity of PA production in different plant species and tissues.
It has been well established that nutrient starvation induces cell autophagy. Now, researchers present large-scale multi-omics analyses of maize autophagy mutants under nitrogen starvation, and show that autophagy could play more housekeeping roles in plants.
In certain types of plant cells, organelle DNA accounts for a substantial proportion of cellular total DNA. Thus, it is hypothesized that organelle DNA could not only serve as the genetic material but also function as a ‘nutrient reservoir’. Now, the researchers demonstrate a mechanism involved in chloroplast DNA degradation and phosphorus recycling during leaf senescence.
The authors map chromatin accessibility after cytokinin treatment in Arabidopsis using fluorescence activated nuclei sorting and ATAC-seq. Regions of chromatin accessibility changes are preferentially located upstream of genes that respond transcriptionally to the hormone, and are enriched in type-B response regulator binding motifs.
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.
The vulnerability of barley production and beer supply to future weather extremes remains unknown. A study using modelling finds that weather extremes associated with climate change would threaten the availability and economic accessibility of beer.
Iron (Fe) is one of the essential micronutrients for plant growth, but overload of Fe causes toxicity. Now researchers have identified a new family of small peptides that regulate Fe homeostasis by acting as phloem-mobile signals in flowering plants.
Rhizobium symbiosis with legumes is inhibited when the soil contains enough available nitrogen. The authors show in Medicago that the NIN and NLP1 transcription factors are necessary for this signalling to occur.
Water-soluble chlorophyll protein forms a tetrameric complex with only four identical chlorophyll-binding sites. Mutational and structural analysis identify the basis of selectivity between a and b forms of chlorophyll.
Rubisco, which catalyses a major rate-limiting reaction in photosynthesis, is an important target for ‘improvement’. This study shows that rather than specifically engineering Rubisco’s properties, overexpression alone can increase the photosynthetic performance of transgenic maize plants.
An analysis of the fruitENCODE data consisting of multiple transcriptome, accessible chromatin, histone and DNA methylation profiles from 11 fleshy fruits reveals three types of transcriptional feedback circuits controlling fruit ripening.
NPR1 is a highly conserved key regulator of SA-mediated immunity. Here, the authors show that it also plays an essential role in a previously unknown pathway that allows plants to adapt and acclimatize to cold temperatures.