Brief Communications in 2018

The engineered Streptococcus pyogenes Cas9 variant SpCas9-NGv1, known to recognize relaxed NG protospacer adjacent motifs (PAMs) in human cells, can also mediate targeted mutagenesis with NG PAMs in rice and Arabidopsis. When fused with cytidine deaminase, it mediates C-to-T substitutions.

A study developed genomic resources and efficient transformation in the orphan crop groundcherry, and managed to improve productivity traits by editing the orthologues of tomato domestication and improvement genes using CRISPR–Cas9.

A bioinformatic analysis shows that the variance in resistance gene content in recently published Brassicaceae genome annotations is partially caused by repeat masking, providing implications for plant breeding.

The authors report the non-canonical crystal structure of the DNA binding domain from BIL1/BZR1, a transcription factor involved in brassinosteroid signalling, in complex with its target DNA fragment.

Self-incompatibility of potatoes hinders the development of inbred diploid lines and breeding efficiency. Now, a study generated self-compatible diploid potatoes by knocking out a self-incompatibility gene, opening new avenues for potato breeding.

A MATL gene mutation was found to induce haploids in maize. Now, knocking out the MATL orthologue in rice results in haploid induction at a rate of 2–6%, suggesting the functional conservation of MATL, and represents an advance for rice breeding.

Plants are sensitive to temperature changes. Now, researchers have found an alternative splicing factor that is essential for the development of Arabidopsis under low temperature, and bridges between alternative splicing and temperature sensitivity.

A descriptive study of several of the oldest baobab trees in sub-Saharan Africa, which are some of the largest and oldest trees on the planet. The authors report that 9 of the 13 oldest baobabs have died in recent years. After describing the structure of the trees (including their false cavities), they also report the carbon dating of these trees and call for more research into the trees’ mortality.

Plant-compatible adenine base editor systems are now demonstrated to work in protoplasts and individual plants of Arabidopsis thaliana and Brassica napus, yielding plants with predicted nucleotide substitutions and stably inherited phenotypes.

A descriptive study comparing two different methods—freelisting or interviews—of gathering ethnobotanical data from indigenous peoples to determine which method provides the largest and most accurate range of species names for plants in a given area.