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It is hypothesized that morphological evolution occurs through a variety of molecular mechanisms. The position and patterning of petal spots in Clarkia evolved through changes to the regulatory region of a gene that encodes a transcriptional activator of pigment synthesis, prompting its control by novel positional cues.
New capabilities for assembling plant Rubisco in bacteria offer a revolution for enhancing photosynthesis. The technology provides a breakthrough to identify and test solutions for improving CO2 fixation by crop Rubisco.
The low number of mutations in multiple sectors from a 234-year-old oak tree reveals possible mechanisms to avoid the irreversible build-up of mutations in long-lived plants.
Resistance to moving sugars from foliage to roots is high in trees, suggesting that the transport mechanism found in herbs might not work in trees. Now with new measurements of phloem structure and leaf turgor pressure, it has been shown that the Münch pressure-flow hypothesis can also explain sugar transport in tall trees.
Phosphinothricin resistance is a widely used trait in plant science research and agriculture. The BAR resistance gene that inactivates phosphinothricin has now been shown to produce two non-specific metabolites in planta. An engineered BAR resistance gene with no detectable off-target activity is developed to address this issue.
Economic and political systems can influence development for decades, shaping food production with lingering effects. These path dependencies of national and international agriculture are examined in a study that links wheat production in the United States and the vulnerability of poorer nations to food insecurity.
The development of an efficient transformation method for pollen promises to provide a simple and tissue culture-independent technique for genetic engineering in plants.
Gene editing reveals that the tomato ripening-inhibitor (rin) mutation encodes an active repressor of ripening, refines our understanding of RIN function and highlights strategies for engineering shelf life control.
Enzymes are a great example of the tight link between sequence, structure and function. A recent study of two dehydrogenases shows exactly how small changes in sequence can have great impacts on function.
Plant growth and development depend on the integration of environmental cues with endogenous signals. Two recent manuscripts provide molecular insights into the mechanism of signal transduction for light and temperature, finding that both impinge on the stability of the PIF3 transcription factor.
Solid genetic and genomic data now reveal that high guanine–cytosine content can prevent transgenes from RNA silencing, and enhance expression and transgenerational stability.
A global analysis of translation efficiency and RNA accumulation revealed that microRNAs in the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas regulate target gene expression via RNA destabilization and translational repression like land plants and metazoans, yet in a different way.
Plastids are integrated into the cellular metabolism by several metabolite and ion transporters. The first crystal structure of one of these transporters, a member of the plastid phosphate transporter family, unravels a rocker-switch transport mode and serves as lead structure for other plastidial and endomembrane system transporters.
Temperature increases are associated with decreases in rainfall and ensuing crop yields. A recent study estimates that such warming over the last 30 years is responsible for 59,300 extra suicides in India, and proposes a new perspective to contextualize the linked effects of global warming in affected agricultural communities.
A mechanism by which plants detect and respond to oxygen starvation has been known for some years. Three recent papers suggest that we haven’t been seeing the full picture.
Gibberellins (GAs) control key growth and developmental processes in plants. Real-time monitoring of GA concentrations in living tissues is critical for understanding the actions of this hormone class. A first-generation optogenetic GA-nano-indicator now illuminates the effects of GA levels on cell length and light signalling.
Programmed cell death is essential but differently regulated in animals and plants. In this Perspective, the features of plant apoptotic-like cell death are reassessed to highlight the similarities between animal and plant programmed cell death.
Hi-C experiments in rice reveal that the rice genome is partitioned into well-defined three-dimensional structures similar to so-called topologically associating domains found in metazoans.
