Volume 4 Issue 6, June 2018

Diversity in plant genomes remains largely unexplored. The 10,000 Plant Genome Sequencing Project is a landmark effort to catalogue plant genomic variation, representing a major step in understanding the tree of life. The project offers new opportunities to study biological processes and address fundamental research questions.

Trade-offs in clearing forests for rubber plantations depend on calculations of opportunity costs. Such costs are not just a matter of economic calculations but also the politics of the forests and those who live in them

The stigma has a tightly regulated functional lifespan and is therefore a key determinant for floral receptivity. New evidence reveals how two transcription factors play a pivotal role in controlling stigma lifespan by regulating developmental programmed cell death in this tissue to terminate pollen receptivity.

The emergence of vascular plants requires tightly regulated mechanisms to control the photosynthate transporting system. For phloem establishment and carbon allocation to sink tissues, a novel translational regulatory network involving a zinc-finger protein and RNA G-quadruplex is now revealed for the first time.

Plants cannot escape from their enemies so they must rely on innate defences to fight off pests and pathogens. Salicylic acid (SA) is a plant hormone that regulates immunity. A new model for perception of the SA signal has been proposed, and could be of paramount importance in developing effective crop protection strategies.

Seeds are products of successful fertilization involving the merging of maternal and paternal gametes. Interspecific pollination can often produce viable seeds but, on germination, these unwanted offspring are generally rejected by an epigenetic barrier, mediated by the endosperm.

Seed shattering is eliminated to facilitate harvest during African rice domestication, and the SH4 gene is known to play a role. New evidence now suggests that another gene, SH3, also regulates shattering during the domestication of African rice.

Serotonin, a well-known neurotransmitter in animals, is also produced by plants. In rice, biosynthesis of serotonin through the cytochrome P450 CYP71A1 gene increases the susceptibility of plants by promoting growth of destructive insects.

Receptor BRI1 interacts with SERK co-receptors to initiate brassinosteroid signalling. BIR pseudokinases are negative regulators. Here, structural and biological data show that BIRs bind SERKs through a lateral interaction site.

Reproductive barriers mediated by endosperm defects prevent gene flow between species. New evidence from Capsella shows that the divergence of paternally expressed imprinted genes between species driven by transposable elements, contributes to this barrier.

Study over 18 years of nearly 50,000 children in New Zealand, measuring the impact of vegetation diversity on the incidence and prevalence of childhood asthma. An increase in the diversity of vegetation in a child’s residential neighbourhood is associated with a lower risk of developing asthma.

All flowers eventually die. Stigma in Arabidopsis flowers can only be pollinated for a limited amount of time. Two NAC transcription factors named KIRA1 and ORESARA1 control cell death in papilla cells, as well as the stigma life span.

RNA G-quadruplex is a secondary RNA structure formed by G-rich sequences. Now a zinc-finger protein has been identified to target the G-quadruplex motifs of two key factors in phloem differentiation, leading to a new translational regulatory pathway.