Volume 2 Issue 12, December 2016

Blue tomatoes, pink bananas and red-fleshed apples. Meet the next generation of healthy fruits.

The specialized photosynthesis adopted by drought-resilient crassulacean acid metabolism plants has inverted the diel stomatal opening behaviour of their ancestral C₃ plants. This was achieved via large-scale reprogramming of expression of the signal transduction machinery and a coordinate shift in the cellular redox poise.

Photosynthesis in C₃ plants is limited by the kinetics of the CO₂-fixing enzyme Rubisco. Natural variation in Rubisco can be exploited to provide new avenues for adapting photosynthetic performance to a changing climate while reducing the environmental footprint of agriculture.

Two recent studies revealed the genetic architecture of the long fascinating heterostyly in Primula and that the absence of a CYP^T gene determines the long style morph.

Photosynthetic organisms must protect themselves from damage during high-light conditions. This Review shows how cyanobacteria trigger such photoprotection using the orange carotenoid protein.

Crassulacean plants have high water-use efficiency and are resilient to drought. A system-wide comparative analysis of protein, transcript and metabolite variations in Agave is presented and may help to transfer this efficiency to other crops.

Mutualisms are common in nature. In Fiji, a species of ant selects, disperses and fertilizes an epiphytic plant in an exclusive symbiosis. This represents a novel example of plant farming by ants.

Proanthocyanidins are important phenolic compounds that affect the taste of plant-based food. A combination of genetics and biochemistry solves the role of leucoanthocyanidin reductase in the polymerization of (epi)catechin units in Medicago.

Two genes controlling the transcriptional network involved in stomatal development in Arabidopsis thaliana have a conserved function in the non-vascular moss Physcomitrella patens. Moss mutants without stomata show delayed capsule dehiscence.

Different cucurbits produce cucurbitacins with varied structures and activities. A comparative genomic study illustrates the genetic basis of cucurbitacin differentiation and tissue-specific cucurbitacin synthesis.

Plants sense bacterial invaders through the binding of non-self molecular patterns and membrane receptors. Natural variation in tomato is used to identify a new receptor for cold-shock protein that can be used to enhance immunity in other species.

The CO₂-fixing enzyme Rubisco from Paniceae grasses shows extensive variation in kinetic responses. Amino acid substitutions in the large subunit could be a route to tailoring the properties of crop Rubiscos to suit future climates.

Little is known of the effects of drought on nutrient cycling in forests. Long-term monitoring of nutrient fluxes shows that drought causes loss of potassium from boreal forests, which may contribute to reduced potassium availability in a warming world.

The genetic model for heterostyly in Primula involves two floral morphs, pin and thrum, with reciprocal anther and stigma heights. This study reveals that the thrum morph is hemizygous and controlled by a cluster of five linked genes absent in the pin morph.