Plant biotechnology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding the regulatory mechanisms of nitrogen assimilation is crucial for developing crop cultivars with improved nitrogen utilization efficiency (NUE). Here the authors identify a new negative regulator of NUE and mutation of this gene increases 10–20% rice grain yield under nitrogen-limiting field conditions.

    • Qing Wang
    • , Jinqiang Nian
    •  & Jianru Zuo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Crops that allocate heavy metals to leaves rather than grains could allow phytoremediation of polluted soil while producing food that is safe to eat. Here, the authors show that a defensin-like protein promotes cadmium secretion from rice cells and allocation to leaves without causing accumulation in grain.

    • Jin-Song Luo
    • , Jing Huang
    •  & Ji-Ming Gong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The newly recognized Fusarium wilt pathogen tropical race 4 is threatening worldwide banana production. Here, the authors transform Cavendish bananas with a resistance gene, RGA2, from diploid banana or a nematode-derived gene, Ced9, and confer resistance to natural infection under field conditions.

    • James Dale
    • , Anthony James
    •  & Robert Harding

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Plants respond to abiotic stress via the phytohormone ABA. Here, Cao et al. report a series of new ABA receptor agonists, named AMFs, which have higher receptor-binding affinities and show that, when employed in tandem with ABA receptor overexpression, can significantly increase drought resistance

    • Min-Jie Cao
    • , Yu-Lu Zhang
    •  & Jian-Kang Zhu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Designer organelles could allow the isolation of synthetic biological pathways from endogenous components of the host cell. Here the authors engineer a peroxisomal protein import pathway orthogonal to the naturally occurring system.

    • Laura L. Cross
    • , Rupesh Paudyal
    •  & Stuart L. Warriner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Variation among wild relatives of crop plants can be used to identify genes underlying traits of agronomic importance. Here, the authors show that a modified mapping-by-sequencing approach can rapidly identify the genetic basis for viral resistance in sugar beet using wild beet populations in their natural habitat.

    • Gina G. Capistrano-Gossmann
    • , D. Ries
    •  & F. J. Kopisch-Obuch

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Targeted homologous recombination between parental chromosomes could facilitate precision breeding of crop plants. Here, Filler Hayutet al. show that CRISPR-Cas9 can be used to induce DNA double strand breaks in somatic tissue and achieve targeted recombination between homologs at an endogenous locus in tomato.

    • Shdema Filler Hayut
    • , Cathy Melamed Bessudo
    •  & Avraham A. Levy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cpf1 is a type V CRISPR effector protein that has different target and guide RNA requirements compared to Cas9, thus offering an addition tool for precision genome editing. Here Kimet al. show that Cpf1 ribonucleoprotein can be introduced into protoplasts and used for transgene-free gene editing in plants.

    • Hyeran Kim
    • , Sang-Tae Kim
    •  & Sang-Gyu Kim

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Genome editing in plants typically requires the expression of Cas9 and guide RNA from stably transformed plasmid DNA. Here, the authors show that successful editing can be achieved after delivery of the Cas9-guide RNA complex as a ribonucleoprotein to maize embryos via biolistics.

    • Sergei Svitashev
    • , Christine Schwartz
    •  & A. Mark Cigan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Plant synthetic biology offers the potential to re-engineer crops, but requires efficient methods to prepare constructs for transformation. Here Shih et al. develop jStack, a method that utilizes yeast homologous recombination and a library of DNA parts, to efficiently assemble plant transformation vectors.

    • Patrick M. Shih
    • , Khanh Vuu
    •  & Dominique Loqué

  • Review Article
    | Open Access

    Photosynthetic microalgae could provide an ecologically sustainable route to produce solar biofuels and high-value chemicals. Here, the authors review various optical management strategies used to manipulate the incident light in order to increase the efficiency of microalgae biofuel production.

    • Matthew D. Ooms
    • , Cao Thang Dinh
    •  & David Sinton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Unambiguous metabolite annotation is a critical, yet problematic step, in mass spectrometry based metabolomics. Here, Shahaf et al. present WEIZMASS, a platform consisting of a diverse spectral library of more than 3500 plant metabolites and software to aid their identification in biological samples.

    • Nir Shahaf
    • , Ilana Rogachev
    •  & Asaph Aharoni

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Plant genome editing typically relies upon transgenic intermediates, which is a concern given the current regulatory requirements concerning GMOs. Here, Zhang et al. describe a method to edit wheat genomes by transiently expressing CRISPR/Cas9 DNA or RNA, and are able to generate mutant plants with no detectable transgenes.

    • Yi Zhang
    • , Zhen Liang
    •  & Caixia Gao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Switching target protein accumulation and activity by portable conditional degrons is potentially useful for both basic research and bioengineering. Here the authors present a versatile system to tune protein levels in live animals and plants using a temperature-sensitive N-end rule degradation signal.

    • Frederik Faden
    • , Thomas Ramezani
    •  & Nico Dissmeyer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Plant-feeding insects of the Lygus genus have emerged as a major pest effecting cotton crops in the USA. Here the authors optimize the insecticidal activity of a Bacillus thuringiensis crystal protein and produce transgenic plants that are resistant to feeding damage by Lygusspecies.

    • Anilkumar Gowda
    • , Timothy J. Rydel
    •  & James A. Baum

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The sensitivity of nitrogenase to oxygen is a major barrier to engineer biological nitrogen fixation into cereal crops by direct nif gene transfer. Here the authors use yeast to show that targeting nitrogenase Fe protein to the mitochondrial matrix overcomes the O2sensitivity impediment.

    • Gema López-Torrejón
    • , Emilio Jiménez-Vicente
    •  & Luis M. Rubio

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sesame is a valuable oilseed crop with a small diploid genome and high seed-oil content making it an attractive model for genetic studies. Here, Wei et al.sequence more than 705 sesame varieties and perform a genome-wide association study to identify genes associated with important agronomic traits.

    • Xin Wei
    • , Kunyan Liu
    •  & Xiurong Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Next-generation sequencing technology has made the generation of huge amounts of genetic data possible, but phenotype characterization remains slow and difficult. Here the authors develop a high-throughput phenotyping facility for rice that is able to accurately identify and characterize traits related to morphology, biomass and yield.

    • Wanneng Yang
    • , Zilong Guo
    •  & Lizhong Xiong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Vanilla is derived from vanillin isolated from a vanillin-producing orchid, but the process is laborious, costly and results in a small yield. Here, the authors identified an enzyme from the orchid, Vanilla planifolia, that is able to catalyse the formation of vanillin and vanillin glucoside from ferulic acid and its glucoside in vitro, respectively.

    • Nethaji J. Gallage
    • , Esben H. Hansen
    •  & Birger Lindberg Møller

  • Article |

    Transcription activator-like effectors (TALEs) of pathogenic bacteria activate target genes in host plants to support infection. Here, the authors show that TALEs with single natural repeats of aberrant length tolerate one base pair deletions and may enable the bacteria to overcome natural plant resistance.

    • Annekatrin Richter
    • , Jana Streubel
    •  & Jens Boch

  • Article |

    Sorghum is an important crop species for the African continent but the grain is difficult to digest. The authors of this study examine a previously identified sorghum mutant known for improved digestion and find that the mutant is the result of a point mutation in the seed-processing protein kafirin.

    • Yongrui Wu
    • , Lingling Yuan
    •  & Joachim Messing

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Barley is an important food crop that has been adapted to grow on acidic soils that often contain toxic soluble aluminium. In this study, an insertion in the upstream region of a citrate transporter is shown to confer resistance of barley to aluminium toxicity and is found in aluminium-tolerant barley accessions.

    • Miho Fujii
    • , Kengo Yokosho
    •  & Jian Feng Ma

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Algae show much promise in the production of biofuels owing to their high photoautotrophic biomass and lipid production rates. In this study, the draft genome ofNannochloropsis gaditanaCCMP526 and a method for the transformation of this alga are reported, facilitating the investigation of lipid synthesis and biofuel production.

    • Randor Radakovits
    • , Robert E. Jinkerson
    •  & Matthew C. Posewitz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The presence of earthworms is known to enhance the quality and moisture of soil in cool and wet climates. Evanset al. show that termites and ants can improve soil quality in warmer and drier climates—their presence results in elevated water infiltration and nitrogen content, leading to increased wheat yields.

    • Theodore A. Evans
    • , Tracy Z. Dawes
    •  & Nathan Lo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Much effort has been devoted to the generation of rice plants with short stature to improve grain yield and increased resistance to lodging. Through quantitative trait analysis, these authors identify a gene—STRONG CULM2—that confers increased grain yield, culm strength and spikelet number in rice.

    • Taiichiro Ookawa
    • , Tokunori Hobo
    •  & Makoto Matsuoka

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