Volume 2 Issue 3, March 2016

The world's ecosystems are losing biodiversity fast. A satellite mission designed to track changes in plant functional diversity around the globe could deepen our understanding of the pace and consequences of this change, and how to manage it.

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.

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.

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.

Different types of transcribed RNAs are processed by distinct RNases. Arabidopsis thaliana RNASE THREE LIKE2 (RTL2) is likely to play two opposing roles by both positively and negatively modulating the accumulation of 24-nucleotide siRNAs.

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.

Fossil plants preserved in amber can give detailed palaeoevolutionary and biogeographical insights; the same degree of preservation can be found for vascular plant remains as for arthropods. This paper presents the earliest member of the highly diverse and widespread asterid clade of angiosperms preserved in mid-Tertiary Dominican amber, Strychnos electri sp. nov.

Flavodiiron proteins are the main mediator of pseudocyclic electron transport in photosynthetic organisms spanning cyanobacteria to gymnosperms, but are missing in angiosperms. Experiments with Arabidopsis plants expressing moss flavodiiron proteins suggest that flavodiiron-dependent electron transport can help to protect angiosperms under fluctuating light.

Current food production systems are heavily dependent on synthetic inputs that threaten the environment and human wellbeing. Results from multi-site field experiments in Thailand, China and Vietnam reveal that surrounding rice fields with nectar-producing plants significantly reduces pest numbers and the need for insecticide applications, while increasing yields.

Crosstalk in plant hormone signalling is important for growth and development. The Arabidopsis transcription factor JUB1 is at the core of a gibberellin/brassinosteroid transcriptional network that controls cell elongation and stress tolerance.

The mRNA cap-binding complex (CBC) has now been shown to form multi-protein complexes with the H3K4 and H3K36 methyltransferases. These complexes are functionally interdependent, coupling chromatin modifications and RNA processing during mature mRNA production.

Two rice WRKY45 alleles show enigmatically opposite effects on resistance to Xanthomonas oryzae. A study now finds that an allele-specific transposon-derived small RNA abolishes WRKY45-mediated resistance by repressing the ST1 gene through DNA methylation.