Volume 1 Issue 2, February 2015

Buried in a notebook from his undergraduate days lie Newton's musings on the movement of sap in trees. Viewed in conjunction with our modern understanding of plant hydrodynamics, his speculations seem prescient.

The development of a new jasmonate reporter further extends the tools that add greater detail to the investigation of plant hormones. Such reporters for the various types of plant hormones, exploiting different aspects of their activity, will help us to eventually study hormone signalling, distribution and dynamics in intact tissue.

Modulating the expression of two flowering-genes can be used to produce wheat spikes with modified spikelet arrangement and higher grain number.

Transposons are a major component of many plant genomes. A comparison of two related species differing in genome size and transposon content provides an opportunity to study how transposons contribute to shaping the genome and epigenome.

Asymmetric cell divisions establish the patterning of stomata in maize. PAN receptor-like kinases were thought to start a signalling cascade leading to pre-mitotic polarization of the cell. Re-analysis of mutants now reveals that the SCAR/WAVE complex is involved in the early initiation of polarity in mother cells.

Chloroplasts of the moss Physcomitrella patens have two types of supercomplex containing light harvesting complexes and photosystem I. One is like those in green algae due to acquisition of the algal protein Lhcb9 by horizontal gene transfer.

By genetic studies the authors report a gene, Ppd-1, which controls paired spikelet development in wheat by regulating the expression of FT. Modulating the expression of Ppd-1 and FT can be used to improve grain-producing spikelets in wheat.

Asymmetric cell divisions establish the patterning of stomata in maize. Here it is demonstrated that the SCAR/WAVE complex and actin networks are involved in the early polarity establishment of PAN's receptor-like kinases in mother cells before division.

The Gora mountains of north-eastern Albania are home to the culturally distinct Gorani and Albanian peoples. Comparison of each's local plant knowledge shows how culture has moulded their use of the environment to alleviate food insecurity.

Closely related plant species can have drastically different abundances of transposable elements. Now it is shown that the genome of Arabis alpina has experienced a striking expansion of retrotransposons, probably shaped by reduced DNA methylation.

The United States is one of the largest soybean exporters in the world. An analysis of meteorological and field-trial data spanning the past 20 years suggests that climatic changes have reduced US soybean yields by around 30%.