Volume 2 Issue 8, August 2016

A detailed phylogenetic study now shows that there is a compelling association between polyploidy and domestication, and that polyploidy more frequently occurs before domestication.

Restoration of damaged ecosystems usually involves fairly crude techniques. A new study suggests that the use of soil inocula can ‘design’ new target communities more subtly.

Roots must sort the good from the bad and distinguish the inside from the outside. In endodermal cells, a ring-like apoplastic diffusion barrier called the Casparian strip is established, splitting the cells down the middle into inner and outer lateral halves. Its integrity and polarity depends on a novel protein kinase called SCHENGEN1.

The fitness costs of individual resistance (R) genes detected in previous studies suggest an impossibly high genetic load associated with disease resistance, if true for all R genes. However, new research shows that Arabidopsis plants with resistant Rps2 are no less fit than those with a susceptible Rps2 allele in the absence of disease.

Dioecious species (those that have distinct male and female plants) are particularly vulnerable to climate change because male and female plants may be spatially segregated and specialized. Female plants will be more impacted by increasing aridity, especially in long-lived species in regions experiencing dramatic climate change. This could lead to an overabundance of male plants at the expense of females in a large number of populations.

Increased legume production and consumption is a promising route to future food security for several reasons: legumes are nutritious foods in their own right, and their nitrogen-fixing capabilities can benefit subsequent crop cultivation. However, legumes are currently under-used and yields will need to be improved if legumes are to become a major food crop. This will entail improvement of genetic diversity in legume breeding programmes, more widespread cultivation of legumes currently grown in restricted regions (such as cowpea), and, possibly, increased government price support

Intensive agricultural activity can degrade ecosystems, and restoration takes decades. This field study shows that soil inocula promote ecosystem restoration, and different inocula (such as grassland/heathland) can steer restoration towards different targets.

Genetic resistance to pathogens is costly, but plants maintain R-gene diversity. The authors show that, in the absence of disease, both resistant and susceptible alleles of RPS2 provide a fitness benefit compared with an artificial deletion.

More drought episodes are expected due to climate change. The authors test how beech tree metabolism is affected by drought, and show that the recovery is dependent on root carbon storage and increased sink activity in the rhizosphere.

The Casparian strip (CS) is a hydrophobic endodermal barrier isolating the cortex from the vasculature in the roots. A visual genetic screen identifies SCHENGEN1, a novel receptor-like kinase crucial for the integrity and positioning of the CS.

The brassinolide biosynthesis enzyme CYP85A2 is controlled by farnesylation (post-translational addition of an isoprenoid tail), which impacts Arabidopsis sensitivity to abscisic acid and drought.

A study examining a genetic data set including dozens of genera containing crop species and their wild relatives shows that domesticated species experienced more polyploidy events than their wild relatives, and domestication followed polyploidization.