Volume 8 Issue 9, September 2022

Changes in climate, including increases in the frequency of lightning, will differentially affect the fitness and mortality of tropical tree species. Variation in the sensitivity of species to climate change will in turn lead to shifts in the composition of tropical forests and the services that they provide.

Crop production depends to a very large extent on phosphorus fertilization, yet the sustainability of this practice is limited by the predicted exhaustion of phosphorus resources. A new molecular pathway regulating phosphorus accumulation in plants has been identified, with PHO1 found to play a pivotal role in mediating it.

Plant microtubules align along directions of anisotropic mechanical stress. Live cell imaging of epidermal pavement cells reveals that cellulose synthase complexes (CSCs) are present in regions of anisotropic mechanical stress in patterns similar to those of microtubules. The coupling of microtubules and CSCs hampers the response of microtubules to mechanical stresses.

Cellular responses to environmental and developmental signals depend on the recruitment of transcription factors to specific genes. Although PIF4 and CDF2 belong to different transcription factor families in Arabidopsis thaliana, data suggest that they act co-operatively to bind to specific target genes in the gene network that regulates hypocotyl cell elongation.

Cooperation between nitrogen assimilation and photosynthesis is central for plant growth and development in adaption to changing environmental conditions. This work reveals that the plant energy sensor SnRK1 represses nitrate signalling by phosphorylating NODULE INCEPTION PROTEIN-LIKE PROTEIN (NLP7) to promote its degradation in response to carbon deficiency or nitrate depletion.

We applied single-molecule nanopore sequencing to over 120 million full-length RNAs, including the poly(A) tail, from various tissues and plant species. The resulting dataset enables the genome-wide characterization of plant poly(A) tails at the single gene level across different tissues and species.

This Review summarizes current technologies for organellar genome editing in plants and their applications, and highlights opportunities brought by emerging techniques such as RNA editing, prime editing and new transformation methods.

This study examines the differential rates of lightning damage and mortality among tree species across a tropical forest in Panama, finding differences in species tolerance to lightning with implications for how lightning shapes forest composition and ecosystem function.

The ancient expansion of savannahs has long been examined through models and palaeorecords, but this new experiment combining CO₂ and drought finds the physiological mechanisms priming the forest-to-savannah transition.

The chromosome-level genome of maidenhair fern, a model species representing the major homosporangium ferns, lays the foundation for studies on fern biology, origin of euphyllophytes and seed plant evolution.

The genome of the model fern species Ceratopteris richardii reveals a history of remarkably dynamic genome evolution, including rapid changes in genome content and structure following the most recent whole-genome duplication approximately 60 million years ago.

Chromatin remodelling exerts nuclear control over plastid development: two Arabidopsis homologues of the NuA4 histone acetyltransferase component EPL1 mediate light-dependent activating chromatin remodelling at positions where genes required for chloroplast biogenesis are encoded.

The behaviour of cellulose synthase and its interaction with microtubules are affected by mechanical stress. The interaction of cellulose synthase with microtubules impedes the response of microtubules to mechanical stress.

Plants confronted with nutrient deficiency allocate more resources to roots to maximize nutrient acquisition and growth. This study uncovers how plants repress phosphate uploading to curtail the long-distance transportation of phosphate to shoots.

Hypocotyl cell elongation is promoted by combinatorial action of PIF4 and CDF2. This occurs because PIF4 enhances binding of CDF2 to common target genes increasing their transcription. These genes include the auxin biosynthesis gene YUCCA8.

The evolutionarily conserved energy sensor SnRK1 interacts with and phosphorylates NLP7 to promote its cytoplasmic localization and degradation, thereby inhibiting nitrate signalling.

This study sheds light on the mechanisms by which different MYB and bHLH transcription factors select their partners to form complexes, and reveals two types of MYB–bHLH interaction modes that are evolutionarily conserved but evolved independently in plants.

This study established a comprehensive poly(A) tail atlas comprising over 120 million full-length RNA reads from various tissues and plant species and found that plant poly(A) tails peaked at 20 and 45 nucleotides, except in pollen and seed where they peaked at longer sizes.