Letters

This study reports the striking discovery that a water-impermeable barrier known as suberin lamellae was first evolved in the common ancestor of seed plants and contributed to their evolutionary success.

Integrating inventory data with machine learning models reveals the global composition of tree types—needle-leaved evergreen individuals dominate, followed by broadleaved evergreen and deciduous trees—and climate change risks.

Large-scale and abrupt forest decline occurred in Central Chile in response to acute drought. The extreme conditions, unprecedented in the recent history of all Mediterranean-type ecosystems, are akin to those projected for the second half of the century.

Cheng et al. show that the root-derived long non-coding RNA ELENA1 is systemically mobile under nitrogen deficiency in a root-to-shoot manner to calibrate leaf senescence by dissociating the MED19a–ORE1 transcriptional complex.

Cardenolides such as digoxin from foxglove (Digitalis spp.) have been used to treat congenital heart conditions, cancer and other chronic diseases for decades. Here, authors report CYP87A enzymes that catalyse pregnenolone formation, the key entry point to the cardenolide pathway in plants.

During transformation via Agrobacterium tumefaciens, sequence composition of T-DNA (that is, DNA repeats) affects T-DNA concatenation in Arabidopsis. In addition, loss of specific DNA repair proteins dramatically decreases T-DNA concatenation levels. This study showcases the potential of T-DNA concatenation as a tool to enhance gene editing.

This study develops a microbe-induced gene silencing technology by constructing an RNAi engineering microbe to prove the existence of interspecies RNAi in rhizospheric fungi and demonstrate its application in crop protection against fungal pathogens.

The partitioning membrane of dividing plant cells is made by vesicle fusion, involving complex-forming membrane-anchored SNARE proteins. The authors show that the disassembly of cis-SNARE complexes by NSF ATPase enables the formation of trans-SNARE complexes, which mediates vesicle fusion.

Manipulating CENH3 can induce haploids in plants. This study demonstrates a strategy to improve both the procedure and efficiency of maternal and paternal haploid production by manipulating temperature and provides valuable insights into the function of CENH3.

Giaume et al. describe the function of a rice florigen-like protein expressed at the shoot apical meristem, required to promote phase transition and shape panicle architecture.

DELLA proteins modulate the activity of dozens of transcription factors through direct physical interaction. This study shows that this molecular ability is conserved in all land plants but with very different biological effects in different lineages.

This study documents recurrent sex chromosome turnovers in kiwifruit lineages and shows that sexual dimorphism is caused by a pleiotropic effect of a single sex-determining gene, transforming our understanding of the evolution of sex chromosomes and sexual dimorphisms.

A 5,400-year record of climate and olive tree dynamics from the Mediterranean illuminates the detrimental consequences on olive agriculture that ongoing temperature increases will have during the twenty-first century.

Crops with broad-spectrum resistance to multiple diseases are highly desirable in agricultural production. This study reports a natural gene variant that produces a proteasome maturation factor and improves rice resistance to four notorious pathogens.

Plant-optimized transcription activator-like effector-linked deaminases enable site-specific A-to-G base editing in the chloroplast genome, leading to heritable homoplasmic base conversions and phenotypic changes.

For a long time, root hairs were believed to expand via tip growth only. This study shows that the root hair shank undergoes considerable expansion too, which coincides with the deposition of new cell wall material in the shank.

Manipulation of genetic exchange is an important objective of plant breeders. Using chromosome engineering to invert a 17.1 Mb fragment on chromosome 2 in Arabidopsis thaliana, meiotic recombination could be suppressed in nearly the entire chromosome.

Root exudates play a key role in modulating the soil microbiota. The export of bitter triterpenes (mediated by a Multidrug and Toxic Compound Extrusion protein) shapes the rhizosphere, leading to robust disease resistance.

Combining very high-resolution imagery of dryland forests worldwide with climate and aquifer data from the mid-Holocene period, this paper illustrates how geological forces of the past shaped today’s forests.

The development of root nodules implies tissue-specific epigenetic modifications of the plant genome, key for proper symbiotic gene expression and nodule activity. This study reveals the DNA methylation dynamics during nodule development.