Volume 7 Issue 5, May 2021

Analysis reveals that the economic importance of crops is most influenced by their antiquity of domestication.

Plants can experience a range of challenges, from osmotic stress to pathogen attack, requiring different types of responses. Despite this variety, two recent studies of plant transcriptomes reveal a surprising commonality in the genes induced by stress.

In a feat of protein engineering alchemy, a FRET biosensor for tryptophan has been engineered into a direct biosensor for auxin, after a determined journey of over 2,800 steps to switch to a sensitivity appropriate for a plant hormone.

Long-distance transport is central to the mode of action of plant growth regulators. But in the case of brassinosteroids, spatiotemporal control of biosynthesis and local movements of the bioactive molecule or its precursors result in local hormone accumulation, functioning as a positional cue in root morphogenesis.

The chloroplast-to-chromoplast transition, occurring when fruits such as tomato turn from green to red, is critical for plant development and is also important agronomically. Now we see a new route to alter the speed of this transition.

Phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate (PI(4,5)P₂) is involved in lipid-mediated intracellular signalling and the regulation of events such as cytoskeletal reorganization and membrane trafficking. An inducible PI(4,5)P₂ depletion system is now available for examining its function in plant cells.

This Review summarizes the available and missing reference genomes in the seed-free plant lineages, compares the genomic and epigenomic features between seed-free and seed plants, and highlights the model systems of seed-free plants.

This Review summarizes current strategies for manipulating genetic linkages in plants, with a focus on the use of CRISPR–Cas technology to generate heritable and targeted chromosomal rearrangements for crop improvement and synthetic biology.

Despite the perception that plant science focuses on strictly scientific criteria, this analysis finds that there is an aesthetic bias in regards to which plants, based on certain traits, receive more research attention.

The perception of immune elicitors induces fast and massive transcriptional reprogramming. A comprehensive analysis of the response to seven molecules uncovers a core danger response and highlights the role of a family of calcium-permeable channels in immunity.

PI(4,5)P₂ is importantly involved in a broad array of cellular processes, including polar auxin transport, vesicle trafficking and anisotropic cell growth. An inducible system is developed in Arabidopsis to conduct tunable depletion of PI(4,5)P₂ and reveal new roles of this membrane lipid.

Analyses of 866 crops showed historical processes affect crop relevance, as crops originating from seasonally dry environments have the greatest agricultural relevance and older crops tend to be globally important compared to crops of recent origin.

Miscanthus is widely used as a feedstock for cellulosic biofuel production. Genome sequencing shows that M. floridulus is most distantly related to other Miscanthus species and is more genetically diverse.

Brassinosteroids are important for organ growth but are not transported over long distances. The authors show that spatiotemporal coordination of multiple biosynthetic enzymes is necessary for local brassinosteroid synthesis in the root elongation zone.

In Arabidopsis, xylem pole pericycle cells produce lateral roots. Here, two subfamilies of bHLH transcription factors are characterized. They confer to these pericycle cells the ability to re-activate cell division and initiate lateral roots.

A genetic screen identifies the versatile membrane receptor protein FERONIA as a key modulator of rhizosphere Pseudomonas and microbiome composition in Arabidopsis, through the control of basal levels of reactive oxygen species production.

Fruit ripening is a fine-tuned process involving wholesale changes to both the structure and metabolism of the fruit. Now, the CHLORAD proteolytic pathway is shown to regulate chromoplast development, thus altering the ripening process of tomato fruits.

Stomatal development requires asymmetric cell division and cell-fate determination, in which BASL is an essential regulator. The binding partners of BASL are now identified and characterized to reveal the molecular mechanism of cell-fate asymmetry in stomata.

Iterating mutagenesis and exposure to increasing light dramatically enhanced the light tolerance of a Synechocystis cyanobacterium strain. This involved over 100 mutations grouped around five haplotypes, as well as putative epistatic interactions.

Microbes induce an immune response in plants that includes transcriptional changes and biosynthesis of defence molecules. Analysis of both transcriptome and metabolome output to multiple bacteria identifies a common non-self response to microorganisms.