Higher dietary intakes of flavonoids may have a beneficial role in cardiovascular disease prevention. Additionally, supplementation of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) in vegan diets can reduce risks associated to their deficiency, particularly in older adults, which can cause loss of skeletal muscle strength and mass. Most plant-derived foods contain only small amounts of BCAAs, and those plants

Our understanding of tropical forests, including their distribution, species composition, structure, and function, is still very limited. In a warming world, it is imperative to try and forecast how forests will respond to more pronounced changes in weather extremes, especially drought and fires, particularly when exacerbated by El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events (oscillating between the warming

Introduction Environmental conditions, including soil compaction, intense microorganism activity, and flooding, can all lead to plants experiencing O2-deficient surroundings, especially around the root system. These kinds of events can have devastating effects on plant productivity with flooding being one of the major factors in global crop losses (Fukao et al., 2019). However, plants have evolved

The discovery of novel flavonoids and a deeper understanding of their biosynthesis are fundamental to understand their roles in plants and their benefits for human and animal health. Herein, we report a new polymerization pathway of a group of novel oligomeric flavonoids in plants. We engineered red cells for discovering genes of interest involved in the flavonoid pathway and identified a gene encoding

Optimizing agroecosystems and crops for micronutrient uptake while reducing issues with inorganic contaminants (metal(loid)s) is a challenging task. One promising approach is to use arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and investigate the physiological, molecular and epigenetic changes that occur in their presence and that lead to changes in plant metal(loid) concentration (biofortification of micronutrients

Introduction Competition via allelopathy is a notable mechanism that structures plant communities (Inderjit et al., 2011; Hierro & Callaway, 2021). Allelopathy has a broad taxonomic distribution, as a recent meta-analysis shows that 72% of all plant families are capable of producing bioactive secondary metabolites (allelochemicals; Kalisz et al., 2021). Allelopathy is also common across ecosystems

Introduction The chemical composition of a plant's essential oil is usually complex involving hundreds of volatile terpenes (synonym for ‘terpenes and terpenoids’), each of which may vary continuously over a large absolute range and constitute from a little to almost all of the extractable oil as a proportion. In many species, the variation in an oil component has a multimodal distribution, and it

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Two-line hybrid breeding can fully utilize heterosis in crops. In thermo-sensitive genic male sterile (TGMS) lines, low critical sterility-inducing temperature (CSIT) is vital to safeguard the production of two-line hybrid seeds in rice (Oryza sativa), but the molecular mechanism determining CSIT is unclear. Here, we cloned CRITICAL STERILITY-INDUCING TEMPERATURE 1 (CSIT1) that encodes an E3 ubiquitin

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Photosynthetic efficiency is the primary determinant of crop yield, including either vegetative biomass or grain yield. Manipulation of key transcription factors known to directly control photosynthetic machinery can be an effective strategy to improve photosynthetic traits. Here, we identified an Arabidopsis gain-of-function mutant cogwheel1-3D (cog1-3D) that shows a significantly enlarged rosette

Since its official release in 2020, TBtools has demonstrated its superior functionality in data analysis as a stand-alone bioinformatics toolkit by the widespread adoption of many thousands of users and references in more than 5,000 academic articles. Now TBtools has become a commonly used tool in biological laboratories. Over the past three years, thanks to invaluable feedback and suggestions from

Global warming impacts crop production and threatens food security. Elevated temperatures are sensed by different cell components. Temperature increases are classified as either mild warm temperatures or excessively hot temperatures, and these are perceived by distinct signaling pathways in plants. Warm temperatures induce thermomorphogenesis, while high temperature stress triggers heat acclimation

To ensure survival and promote growth, sessile plants have developed intricate internal signaling networks tailored in diverse cells and organs with both shared and specialized functions that respond to various internal and external cues. A fascinating question arises: how can a plant cell or organ diagnose the spatial and temporal information it is experiencing to know ‘where I am’, and then is able

Although, the recombinant HRP was successfully expressed and purified in Nicotiana benthamiana (Huddy et al., 2018) and plant-based antibody fused to HRP protein is being sold commercially (Cape Bio Pharms, Cape town, South Africa), a solid-phase competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (SPCE) based on plant-produced HRP fused to a diagnostic antibody for viral detection has yet to be reported

The elimination of seed shattering was a key step in rice (Oryza sativa) domestication. In this paper, we show that increasing the gibberellic acid (GA) content or response in the abscission region enhanced seed shattering in rice. We demonstrate that SLENDER RICE1 (SLR1), the key repressor of GA signaling, could physically interact with the rice seed shattering-related transcription factors QTL of

CYP78A, a cytochrome P450 subfamily that includes rice (Oryza sativa L.) BIG GRAIN2 (BG2, CYP78A13) and Arabidopsis thaliana KLUH (KLU, CYP78A5), generates an unknown mobile growth signal (referred to as a CYP78A-derived signal) that increases grain (seed) size. However, the mechanism by which the CYP78A pathway increases grain size remains elusive. Here, we characterized a rice small grain mutant

The nucleoskeleton forms a filamentous meshwork under the nuclear envelope and contributes to the regulation of nuclear shape and gene expression. To understand how the Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) nucleoskeleton physically connects to the nuclear periphery in plants, we investigated the Arabidopsis nucleoskeleton protein KAKU4 and sought for functional regions responsible for its localisation

Temperature is a major factor that regulates plant growth and phenotypic diversity. To ensure reproductive success at a range of temperatures, plants must maintain developmental stability of their sexual organs when exposed to temperature fluctuations. However, the mechanisms integrating plant floral organ development and temperature responses are largely unknown. Here, we generated barley and rice

Exposure of dark-grown etiolated seedlings to light triggers the transition from skotomorphogenesis/etiolation to photomorphogenesis/de-etiolation. In the life cycle of plants, de-etiolation is essential for seedling development and plant survival. The mobilization of soluble sugars (glucose, sucrose and fructose) derived from stored carbohydrates and lipids to target organs, including cotyledons,

Plants are consistently exposed to pathogens throughout their life cycle and have developed sophisticated and effective regulatory mechanisms to protect themselves against infections. Viruses, as obligate pathogens, can trigger numerous pathological changes and cause systemic damages that impact all aspects of plant life through encoded viral proteins, conceptually considered as "effectors". Phytohormones

Forty years ago, Barbara McClintock — an exceptional plant scientist — was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine; only the third woman to win a Nobel prize without collaborators.

Root developmental plasticity is crucial for plants to adapt to changing soil environment, where nutrients and abiotic stress factors are distributed heterogeneously. How plant roots sense and avoid heterogeneous abiotic stress in soil remains unclear. Here, we show that, in response to asymmetric stress of heavy metals (Cd, Cu or Pb) and salt (NaCl), rice roots rapidly proliferate lateral roots (LR)

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To cope with increasing climate change, growing demands of society, the long breeding cycles and various stresses, that is necessary to establish molecular breeding system, through transgene and genome editing technology, for natural forest tree species. White birch (Betula platyphylla Suk.), belonging to the Betulaceae family, is distributed in the Northeast China forest with ecological and economic

Gene duplication is a powerful source of biological innovation giving rise to paralogous genes that undergo diverse fates. Redundancy between paralogous genes is an intriguing outcome of duplicate gene evolution, and its maintenance over evolutionary time has long been considered a paradox. Redundancy can also be dubbed ‘a geneticist's nightmare’: It hinders the predictability of genome editing outcomes

Necrotrophic fungi, such as Botrytis cinerea and Alternaria solani, cause severe damage in tomato production. There is no report of any single resistance (R) gene that can provide dominant resistance against necrotrophic fungi (Davis et al., 2009; Finkers et al., 2007). In this study, we demonstrate that breeding tomato for broad-spectrum resistance towards necrotrophic fungi can be achieved by editing

Daylength, a seasonal and latitudinal variable, exerts a substantial impact on plant growth. However, the relationship between daylength and growth is non-proportional, suggesting the existence of adaptive mechanisms. Thus, our study aimed to comprehensively investigate the adaptive strategies employed by plants in response to daylength variation. We grew false flax (Camelina sativa) plants, a model

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play important roles in various signaling pathways in vascular plants. However, the crosstalk between lncRNAs and E3 ubiquitin ligases has been barely reported. In this study, we demonstrate that the lncRNA lncWD83 from rose (Rosa chinensis) ‘Old blush’ activates flowering by modulating the ubiquitination of the floral repressor MYC2 LIKE (RcMYC2L). Flowering was substantially

High temperature induces stomatal opening; however, uncontrolled stomatal opening is dangerous for plants in response to high temperature. We identified a high-temperature sensitive (hts) mutant from the ethyl methane sulfonate (EMS)-induced maize (Zea mays) mutant library that is linked to a single base change in MITOGEN-ACTIVATED PROTEIN KINASE 20 (ZmMPK20). Our data demonstrated that hts mutants

Nitrogen (N) is essential for plant growth and development. Therefore, understanding its utilization is essential for improving crop productivity. However, much remains to be learned about plant N sensing and signaling. Here, rice (Oryza sativa) NUCLEAR FACTOR-YA5 (OsNF-YA5) expression was tightly regulated by N status and induced under N-deficient conditions. Over-expression (OE) of OsNF-YA5 in rice

The gibberellins (GA) receptor GA INSENSITIVE DWARF1 (GID1) plays a central role in GA signal perception and transduction. The typical photoperiodic plant chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum morifolium) only flowers when grown in short-day photoperiods. In addition, chrysanthemum flowering is also controlled by the aging pathway, but whether and how GAs participate in photoperiod- and age-dependent regulation

Nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) are the most important macronutrients required for plant growth and development. To cope with the limited and uneven distribution of N and P in complicated soil environments, plants have evolved intricate molecular strategies to improve nutrient acquisition that involve adaptive root development, production of root exudates, and the assistance of microbes. Recently,

Leaves are the main photosynthetic organs in plants, and their anatomy is optimized for light interception and gas exchange. Although each species has a characteristic leaf anatomy, which depends on the genotype, leaves also show a large degree of developmental plasticity. Light and temperature regulate leaf development from primordia differentiation to late stages of blade expansion. While the molecular

Seeds establish dormancy to delay germination until the arrival of a favorable growth season. Here, we identify a fate switch constituted by the MKK3-MPK7 kinase cascade and the ethylene response factor ERF4 responsible for the seed state transition from dormancy to germination. We show that dormancy-breaking factors activate the MKK3-MPK7 module, which affects and relies on the expression of some

A global team of researchers, led by Daniel Maynard at ETH Zurich, published a study in Nature exploring the human and ecological drivers that underlie the establishment of non-native tree species and their subsequent invasion severity. Using forest inventory data from across the world to map non-native tree species, they found that the likelihood of invasion was predominantly determined by human factors

Introduction Nitrogen (N) is a fundamental nutrient for all living organisms and can limit plant productivity and impact food security around the globe (Elser et al., 2007; Gruber & Galloway, 2008). At the same time, excess N inputs into the biosphere through anthropogenic activities lead to environmental problems including the eutrophication of drinking water and the emission of greenhouse gases (Schlesinger

Glycine-rich RNA-binding proteins (GRPs) have been implicated in the responses of plants to environmental stresses, but the function of GRP genes involved in salt stress and the underlying mechanism remain unclear. In this study, we identified BpGRP1 (glycine-rich RNA-binding protein), a Betula platyphylla gene that is induced under salt stress. The physiological and molecular responses to salt tolerance

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play an important role in abiotic stress tolerance. However, their function in conferring abiotic stress tolerance is still unclear. Herein, we characterized the function of a salt-responsive nuclear lncRNA (BplncSIR1) from Betula platyphylla (birch). Birch plants overexpressing and knocking out for BplncSIR1 were generated. BplncSIR1 was found to improve salt tolerance

Introduction The flux of water from the terrestrial landscape to the atmosphere fundamentally influences the Earth's energy budget and hydrological cycle and is mediated by its pathway through vegetation. Over short timescales, vegetation controls water vapour fluxes by varying stomatal conductance, but over greater temporal and spatial scales, fluxes are determined by vegetation community composition

Introduction Trait-based plant ecology assumes that plant attributes, that is, functional traits, mediate community assembly and ecosystem processes (Violle et al., 2007; Shipley et al., 2016). Traditionally, this discipline focused on mean differences between species' traits (i.e. interspecific trait variation) to address ecological questions related, for example, to plant coexistence or niche differentiation