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Unable to run away, plants adapt to environmental changes by adjusting their development. Two recent publications explore the unexpected contribution of blue light photoreceptors in the growth response to shade and warm temperatures.
Brassinosteroids and gibberellins are two principal growth-promoting hormones in plants. A transcription factor called JUB1 connects their signalling and biosynthesis through positive and negative feedback loops to finely coordinate developmental output.
Transcriptional gene silencing is a pivotal mechanism for regulating gene expression and genome stability. In Arabidopsis, combined analyses of small RNAs (sRNAs) and DNA methylation reveals that mobile 24-nt sRNAs are involved in reinforcing genome-wide silencing of transposons through DNA methylation.
Flavodiiron proteins help to protect cyanobacteria from excess light through the dissipation of excess electrons. Introducing moss flavodiiron proteins into Arabidopsis raises its resilience to fluctuating light, illustrating the potential for augmenting higher plants with photosynthetic components from lower plants, algae and cyanobacteria.
Buried seedlings must grow both strongly, to push through soil to the surface, and fast, to reach the light as quickly as possible. A recent study finds that a pair of sequentially acting E3 ubiquitin ligases balances these conflicting imperatives.
A broad-scale analysis of genic DNA methylation across the phylogeny of land plants reveals unexpected variation and provides insights into the evolutionary forces shaping it.
Major life cycle transitions happen after changes in stem cells trigger new developmental programs. In moss, expression of the homeobox transcription factor BELL1 is sufficient to induce sporophyte stem cells from the gametophyte phase, without having to go through fertilization.
Angiosperm evolution involves a major transition from spiral to whorled arrangements of floral organs. Examination of the genetic programs specifying floral organ identity in Nigella damascene, a species of Ranunculaceae with spiral flowers, illuminates the molecular basis of how spiral flowers can have flexible numbers of floral organs.
Three independent genetic studies reveal that the GRF–miR396 module regulates rice grain yield by controlling the number of spikelets or the size of individual grains. These findings provide promising targets for significantly increasing crop yield.
The impacts of the prokaryotic ancestry of chloroplasts extend to the occurrence of a bacterial ‘alarm’ hormone, or alarmone, in plants, which is triggered by nutrient deficiency or stress. A new study shows that chloroplast development itself is reduced by alarmone, with seemingly paradoxical consequences for plant growth.
Causal signals for seed initiation have been sought ever since double fertilization was discovered in 1898. New research reveals that auxin is an early driver of endosperm proliferation in Arabidopsis central cells, with or without fertilization.
Ethylene is a gaseous plant hormone. The finding that unveils regulation of ethylene signalling at the translational level adds complexity to the ethylene signalling ‘regulatome’ and generates insightful questions that may advance our understanding of the pathway.
The fields of ecology and evolutionary biology are implicitly connected. A new theory that links the global distribution and evolution of nitrogen-fixing trees uses the universal language of mathematics to make this connection more explicit.
The genome of a tiny resurrection plant has been sequenced using PacBio's long-read single-molecule real-time sequencing technology, aiding the understanding of extreme desiccation tolerance. The genome contiguity is comparable to that of genomes sequenced using far more laborious approaches.
