Perspective |
Featured
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News & Views |
Brunch with a carnivorous plant
A meaty menu for a peckish perennial, and a fairground-style festival of physics, in this week’s snippets from Nature’s archive.
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Article
| Open AccessProbing plant signal processing optogenetically by two channelrhodopsins
Using new optogenetic tools to induce distinct ion fluxes, a study shows that these discrete signals trigger different metabolic and transcriptional pathways that allow plants to respond to specific types of stress.
- Meiqi Ding
- , Yang Zhou
- & Kai R. Konrad
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Article |
Sperm-origin paternal effects on root stem cell niche differentiation
TREE1 and its homologue DAZ3 are expressed exclusively in Arabidopsis sperm, showing how genetic deficiencies can exert enduring paternal effects on specific plant organ differentiation and how parental-of-origin genes interact to ensure normal embryogenesis.
- Tianhe Cheng
- , Zhenzhen Liu
- & Meng-Xiang Sun
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Research Briefing |
Largest genomic tree of life of flowering plants to date includes almost 8,000 genera
A tree of life based on genes from across the nuclear genome and containing nearly 60% of all angiosperm genera unveils the complex evolutionary history of flowering plants. This tree both corroborates and challenges existing knowledge on angiosperm relationships and classification, and reveals two diversification surges, underpinned by many contrasting histories in individual plant lineages.
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Article
| Open AccessOrigin and evolution of the bread wheat D genome
Analysis of 46 newly sequenced or re-sequenced Tausch’s goatgrass (Aegilops tauschii) accessions establishes the origin of the bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) D genome from genetically and geographically discrete Ae. tauschii subpopulations.
- Emile Cavalet-Giorsa
- , Andrea González-Muñoz
- & Simon G. Krattinger
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Nature Podcast |
Where weird plants thrive: aridity spurs diversity of traits
As environments get more dry, plant species numbers drop, but the number of traits increase — plus, what the hottest temperatures for centuries mean for the Great Barrier Reef.
- Nick Petrić Howe
- & Emily Bates
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Article
| Open AccessTeosinte Pollen Drive guides maize diversification and domestication by RNAi
An example of hybrid incompatibility between maize and teosinte reveals a selfish toxin–antidote system mediated by small RNAs that may have contributed to the origin of maize.
- Benjamin Berube
- , Evan Ernst
- & Robert A. Martienssen
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Article |
Unforeseen plant phenotypic diversity in a dry and grazed world
Analysis of 20 chemical and morphological plant traits at diverse sites across 6 continents shows that the transition from semi-arid to arid zones is associated with an unexpected 88% increase in trait diversity.
- Nicolas Gross
- , Fernando T. Maestre
- & Yoann Le Bagousse-Pinguet
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Nature Podcast |
How light-based computers could cut AI’s energy needs
Replacing lasers with LEDs in computer components lowers power consumption — plus, the spread of H5N1 influenza in US cow herds.
- Benjamin Thompson
- & Elizabeth Gibney
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News & Views |
Rhapsodies in green: the poetry of plant biology
Poems that bring plant biology to life, and remembering the achievements of the physicist Patrick Blackett, in our weekly dip into Nature’s archive.
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Research Highlight |
How the rose got its iconic fragrance
A bouquet of genes involved in making volatile compounds helps to produce the flower’s characteristic scent.
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News |
Hundreds of racist plant names will change after historic vote by botanists
Scientific designations containing a racial slur will be altered — the first time that any species names have been adjusted because of the offence they cause.
- Ewen Callaway
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News & Views |
Things fall into place: how plants sense and respond to gravity
How plants sense their orientation in relation to gravity and steer their root and shoot growth accordingly is not fully understood. The discovery of key steps needed for this process fills in some of the gaps in our knowledge.
- Suruchi Roychoudhry
- & Stefan Kepinski
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Article |
Identification of plant transcriptional activation domains
A high-throughput yeast-based assay is used to identify more than 1,500 activation domains (ADs) in Arabidopsis transcription factors, and a deep learning approach applied to this dataset can predict AD activity on the basis of sequence features.
- Nicholas Morffy
- , Lisa Van den Broeck
- & Lucia C. Strader
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News |
Many plant names are offensive: botanists will vote on whether to change them
Researchers at an international meeting will also consider how to monitor names that have problematic roots.
- Ewen Callaway
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Article
| Open AccessZinc mediates control of nitrogen fixation via transcription factor filamentation
Zinc acts as a second messenger in root nodules and regulates nitrogen homeostasis by controlling the transition between the active state and the inactive filamentous state of the novel transcriptional regulator FIXATION UNDER NITRATE (FUN).
- Jieshun Lin
- , Peter K. Bjørk
- & Dugald Reid
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Article
| Open AccessTransposase-assisted target-site integration for efficient plant genome engineering
Fusion of rice Pong transposase to the Cas9 or Cas12a programmable nucleases provides sequence-specific targeted insertion of enhancer elements, an open reading frame and gene expression cassette into the genome of the model plant Arabidopsis and crop soybean.
- Peng Liu
- , Kaushik Panda
- & R. Keith Slotkin
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Article
| Open AccessHarnessing landrace diversity empowers wheat breeding
Genomic and phenomic screens of 827 wheat landraces from the A. E. Watkins collection provide insight into the wheat population genetic background, unlocking many agronomic traits and revealing haplotypes that could potentially be used to improve modern wheat cultivars.
- Shifeng Cheng
- , Cong Feng
- & Simon Griffiths
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Career Q&A |
My pivot from grain scientist to slave-trade historian
Geoff Palmer, Scotland’s first Black professor, now applies scientific rigour to researching slavery.
- Christine Ro
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Article |
Maize smart-canopy architecture enhances yield at high densities
A natural mutant of maize exhibits leaf characteristics in line with the ‘smart canopy’ ideotype for high-density planting and boosts yields in large-scale field trials.
- Jinge Tian
- , Chenglong Wang
- & Feng Tian
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Article
| Open AccessOligomerization-mediated autoinhibition and cofactor binding of a plant NLR
Cryo-electron microscopy reveals that the tomato immune receptor NRC2 forms oligomers to stabilize its inactive state and sequester it from activation, with inositol phosphates acting as immunoregulatory cofactors.
- Shoucai Ma
- , Chunpeng An
- & Jijie Chai
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Article
| Open AccessMicrobial competition for phosphorus limits the CO2 response of a mature forest
Microbial pre-emption of mineralized soil P limits the capacity of trees for increased P uptake and assimilation under elevated CO2 and therefore restricts their capacity to sequester extra C.
- Mingkai Jiang
- , Kristine Y. Crous
- & David S. Ellsworth
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News |
Biggest genome ever found belongs to this odd little plant
The gigantic genome of a type of fork fern smashes the human one in terms of size.
- Max Kozlov
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Article
| Open AccessOsmosensor-mediated control of Ca2+ spiking in pollen germination
Screening in Escherichia coli and biochemical experiments show that in Arabidopsis thaliana, OSCA2.1 and OSCA2.2 function as plant sensors of hypo-osmolarity, utilize Ca2+ oscillations as second messengers and have crucial roles in pollen germination.
- Songyu Pei
- , Qi Tao
- & Fang Yuan
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Article
| Open AccessThe temperature sensor TWA1 is required for thermotolerance in Arabidopsis
TWA1 is a temperature-sensing transcriptional co-regulator that is needed for basal and acquired thermotolerance in Arabidopsis thaliana.
- Lisa Bohn
- , Jin Huang
- & Erwin Grill
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Article
| Open AccessThe rise of baobab trees in Madagascar
We carried out genomic and ecological analyses of all eight extant baobab species, providing insights into their evolutionary history and recommendations for conservation efforts.
- Jun-Nan Wan
- , Sheng-Wei Wang
- & Qing-Feng Wang
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Article |
Release of a ubiquitin brake activates OsCERK1-triggered immunity in rice
The ubiquitin E3 ligase OsCIE1 acts as a brake to inhibit OsCERK1 during homeostasis; this brake is released after chitin stimulation.
- Gang Wang
- , Xi Chen
- & Ertao Wang
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Book Review |
Smarty plants? Controversial plant-intelligence studies explored in new book
A deep dive into plant behaviour and consciousness asks why the topic has been taboo for so long, and whether botanists are changing their minds about plants’ cognitive abilities.
- Beronda L. Montgomery
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Article
| Open AccessPhylogenomics and the rise of the angiosperms
Phylogenomic analysis of 7,923 angiosperm species using a standardized set of 353 nuclear genes produced an angiosperm tree of life dated with 200 fossil calibrations, providing key insights into evolutionary relationships and diversification.
- Alexandre R. Zuntini
- , Tom Carruthers
- & William J. Baker
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Book Review |
Are women in research being led up the garden path?
A moving memoir of botany and motherhood explores the historical pressures on female scientists.
- Josie Glausiusz
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Article
| Open AccessThe complex polyploid genome architecture of sugarcane
We build a polyploid reference genome for hybrid sugarcane cultivar R570, improving on its current ‘mosaic monoploid’ representation, enabling fine-grain description of genome architecture and the exploration of candidate genes underlying the Bru1 brown rust resistance locus.
- A. L. Healey
- , O. Garsmeur
- & A. D’Hont
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Obituary |
Estella Bergere Leopold (1927–2024), passionate environmentalist who traced changing ecosystems
The trailblazing palaeobotanist investigated how climate change affected Earth in the past — and firmly believed science should be used in its defence now.
- Cathy Whitlock
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News Feature |
The ‘Mother Tree’ idea is everywhere — but how much of it is real?
A popular theory about how trees cooperate has enchanted the public and raised the profile of forest conservation. But some ecologists think its scientific basis has been oversold.
- Aisling Irwin
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Article
| Open AccessSubstrate-induced condensation activates plant TIR domain proteins
Binding of the substrates NAD+ and ATP to the plant Toll/interleukin-1 receptor (TIR) domain proteins induces phase separation and, thereby, activation of TIR enzymatic and immune signalling activity.
- Wen Song
- , Li Liu
- & Jijie Chai
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Article
| Open AccessAnoxygenic phototroph of the Chloroflexota uses a type I reaction centre
Cultivation of a new anoxygenic phototrophic bacterium from Boreal Shield lake water—representing a transition form in the evolution of photosynthesis—offers insights into how the major modes of phototrophy diversified.
- J. M. Tsuji
- , N. A. Shaw
- & J. D. Neufeld
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Where I Work |
Why I wander with wonder through Lesotho’s wetlands
Lerato Seleteng-Kose studies the unique plants that live in these cold, remote parts of southern Africa.
- Linda Nordling
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Article |
Mechanisms of calcium homeostasis orchestrate plant growth and immunity
A study of calcium homeostasis in the plant Arabidopsis reveals two signalling pathways it uses to balance the objectives of growth and immunity by regulating the level of Ca2+ in the cytosol.
- Chao Wang
- , Ren-Jie Tang
- & Sheng Luan
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News |
Glow way! Bioluminescent houseplant hits US market for first time
Engineered petunia emits a continuous green glow thanks to genes from a light-up mushroom.
- Katherine Bourzac
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News & Views |
Unravelling how plant cells divide and differ
In a multicellular organism, normal growth requires control of cell division to generate cells that are similar to or different from their parents. Analysis of this process in plant roots reveals how this mechanism is regulated.
- Ikram Blilou
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Article
| Open AccessOxygen-evolving photosystem II structures during S1–S2–S3 transitions
Serial femtosecond crystallography reveals the structural dynamics of photosystem II during the S-state transitions that produce dioxygen, providing insight into electron transfer, water insertion, proton release and O–O bond formation on sub-microsecond timescales.
- Hongjie Li
- , Yoshiki Nakajima
- & Jian-Ren Shen
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Article
| Open AccessSHR and SCR coordinate root patterning and growth early in the cell cycle
Quantitative time-resolved microscopy analysis of SHR and SCR dynamics in single cells of living Arabidopsis roots shows that these transcription factors coordinate formative and proliferative cell divisions early in the cell cycle.
- Cara M. Winter
- , Pablo Szekely
- & Philip N. Benfey
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News |
CRISPR-edited crops break new ground in Africa
Scientists in the global south use the popular technique to protect local crops against local threats.
- Heidi Ledford
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News |
All arabica coffee is genetically similar: how can beans taste so different?
Flavour variations are mainly the result of changes at the chromosome level, sequencing effort finds.
- Bianca Nogrady
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Article |
Spatial IMA1 regulation restricts root iron acquisition on MAMP perception
Microorganism-associated molecular patterns such as flagellin lead to suppression of root iron acquisition through localized degradation of the systemic iron-deficiency signalling peptide Iron Man 1 in Arabidopsis thaliana.
- Min Cao
- , Matthieu Pierre Platre
- & Wolfgang Busch
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News & Views |
How plants iron out the competing interests of growth and defence
Once a plant recognizes a pathogen, part of its defence strategy is to withhold iron. The mechanism involves suppression of root acquisition of iron by degrading a molecule that activates the iron-uptake pathway.
- Shanice S. Webster
- & Mary Lou Guerinot
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News Feature |
How CRISPR could yield the next blockbuster crop
Scientists are attempting to rapidly domesticate wild plant species by editing specific genes, but they face major technical challenges — and concerns about exploitation of Indigenous knowledge.
- Michael Marshall
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Where I Work |
How I fuse Western science with Traditional Knowledge
Indigenous Canadian ecologist Jennifer Grenz abandons colonial restoration dogma to reshape land systems according to community needs.
- Virginia Gewin
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Nature Podcast |
Audio long read: Apple revival — how science is bringing historic varieties back to life
Genomic studies of heirloom apples could help safeguard the future of the fruit.
- Christopher Kemp
- & Benjamin Thompson
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Where I Work |
Eavesdropping on plant chatter
Amie Fornah Sankoh studies how viruses commandeer plant communication at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center.
- Virginia Gewin
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