The extent to which ectomycorrhizal fungi decay soil organic matter SOM has implications for accurate predictions of forest ecosystem response to climate change. The distribution of gene-traits associated with SOM decay remains poorly understood among ectomycorrhizal fungal communities. We hypothesized that soil inorganic N availability acts as an environmental filter that structures the distribution

Because of their importance as chemical mediators, the presence of a rich and varied family of lipoxygenase (LOX) products, collectively named oxylipins, has been deeply investigated in diatoms and the involvement of these products in important processes such as bloom regulation has been postulated. Nevertheless, little information is available on the enzymes and pathways operating in these protists

Stress and nutrient availability influence cell proliferation through complex intracellular signaling networks. In a previous study it was found that pyro-inositol polyphosphates (InsP7 and InsP8) produced by VIP1 kinase, and TOR kinase signaling interacted synergistically to control cell growth and lipid metabolism in the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. However, the relationship between InsPs

Mangroves are adapted to harsh environments, such as high UV light, low nutrition, and fluctuating salinity in coastal zones. However, little is known about the transcriptomic and epigenomic basis of the resilience of mangroves due to limited available genome resources. We performed a de novo genome assembly and in natura epigenome analyses of the mangrove Bruguiera gymnorhiza, one of the dominant

Root-knot nematodes, Meloidogyne spp., secrete effectors to modulate plant immune responses and establish a parasitic relationship with host plants. However, the functions and plant targets of C-type lectin (CTL)-like effectors of Meloidogyne incognita remain unknown. Here, we characterized a CTL-like effector of M. incognita, MiCTL1a, and identified its target and role in nematode parasitism. In situ

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are essential regulators of gene expression in metazoans and plants. In plants, most miRNAs are generated from primary miRNA transcripts (pri-miRNAs), which are processed by the Dicer-like 1 (DCL1) complex along with accessory proteins. Serrate-Associated Protein 1 (SEAP1), a conserved splicing-related protein, has been studied in human and yeast. However, the functions of SEAP1

Soil fungi establish mutualistic interactions with the roots of most vascular land plants. Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are among the most extensively characterised mycobionts to date. Current approaches to quantifying the extent of root colonisation and the abundance of hyphal structures in mutant roots rely on staining and human scoring involving simple yet repetitive tasks which are prone to

・ Root parasitic plants such as Striga, Orobanche, and Phelipanche spp., cause serious damage to crop production worldwide. Deletion of the Low Germination Stimulant 1 (LGS1) gene gives a Striga-resistance trait in sorghum (Sorghum bicolor). The LGS1 gene encodes a sulfotransferase-like protein, but its function has not been elucidated. ・ Since the profile of strigolactones (SLs) that induce seed germination

RNA-dependent RNA polymerases (RDR) generate double-stranded (ds)RNA triggers for RNA silencing across eukaryotes. Among the three clades, α-clade and β-clade members are key components of RNA silencing and mediators of stress responses across eukaryotes. However, γ-clade members are unusual in that they are represented in phylogenetically distant plants and fungi, and their functions are unknown.

The effect of drought on the interplay of processes controlling carbon partitioning into plant primary and secondary metabolisms such as respiratory CO2 release and volatile organic compound (VOC) biosynthesis, is not fully understood. To elucidate the effect of drought on the fate of cellular C-sources into VOCs vs. CO2, we conducted tracer experiments with 13CO2 and position-specific 13C-labeled

Climate extremes pose enormous threats to natural ecosystems. Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are key plant symbionts that can affect plant community dynamics and ecosystem stability. However, knowledge about how AM fungal communities respond to climate extremes in natural ecosystems remains elusive. Based on a grassland extreme drought experiment in Inner Mongolia, we investigated the response of

Mucoromycotina ‘fine root endophytes’ form globally widespread, nutritional mutualisms with plants Mucoromycotina ‘fine root endophytes’ (MFRE), referred to previously as Glomus tenue (Greenall) or more recently Planticonsortium tenue (Walker et al., 2018), are a globally distributed group of soil fungi (Orchard et al., 2017a) that form endosymbioses with plants from across most of the land plant phylogeny

The supply of carbon (C) from tree photosynthesis to ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi is known to decrease with increasing plant nitrogen (N) supply, but how this affects fungal nutrition and growth remains to be clarified. We placed mesh-bags with quartz sand, with or without an organic N (15N-, 13C-labeled) source, in the soil along a natural N supply gradient in boreal forest, to measure growth and use

Mesophyll conductance (gm) determines CO2 diffusion rates from mesophyll intercellular air spaces to the chloroplasts and is an important factor limiting photosynthesis. Increasing gm in cultivated plants is a potential strategy to increase photosynthesis and water use efficiency (WUEi). The anatomy of the leaf and metabolic factors such as aquaporins and carbonic anhydrases have been identified as

Crop diversity underpins the productivity, resilience, and adaptive capacity of agriculture. Loss of this diversity, termed crop genetic erosion, is therefore concerning. While alarms regarding evident declines in crop diversity have been raised for over a century, the magnitude, trajectory, drivers, and significance of these losses remain insufficiently understood. We outline the various definitions

Non-native invasive species (NIS) release chemicals into the environment that are unique to the invaded communities, defined as novel chemicals. Novel chemicals impact competitors, soil microbial communities, mutualists, plant enemies, and soil nutrients differently than in the species’ native range. Ecological functions of novel chemicals and differences in functions between the native and non-native

Admixture is a mechanism by which species of long-lived plants may acquire novel alleles. However, the potential role of admixture in the origin and maintenance of tropical plant diversity is unclear. We ask whether admixture occurs in an ecologically important clade of Eschweilera (Parvifolia clade, Lecythidaceae), which includes some of the most widespread and abundant tree species in Amazonian forests

● Phenological studies often focus on relationships between flowering date and temperature or other environmental variables. Yet in species that preform flowers, anthesis is one stage of a lengthy developmental process, and effects of temperature on flower development in the year(s) before flowering are largely unknown. ● We investigated the effects of temperature during preformation on flower development

● Leaf reflectance spectroscopy is emerging as an effective tool for assessing plant diversity and function. However, the ability of leaf spectra to detect fine-scale plant evolutionary diversity in complicated biological scenarios is not well understood. ● We test if reflectance spectra (400-2400 nm) can distinguish species and detect fine-scale population structure and phylogenetic divergence – estimated

Plants are able to detect insect eggs deposited on leaves. In Arabidopsis thaliana, eggs of the large white Pieris brassicae induce plant defenses and activate the salicylic acid (SA) pathway. We previously discovered that oviposition triggers a systemic acquired resistance (SAR) against the bacterial hemibiotroph pathogen Pseudomonas syringae. Here, we show that insect eggs or treatment with egg extract

Seasonal patterns of water availability can differ dramatically among ecosystems, with well-known consequences for ecosystem structure and functioning. Less appreciated is that climate change can shift the seasonality of water availability (e.g., to wetter springs, drier summers), resulting in both subtle and profound ecological impacts. Here we 1) review evidence that the seasonal availability of

The ability to predict future risks is essential for many organisms, including plants. Plants can gather information about potential future herbivory by detecting volatiles that are emitted by herbivore-attacked neighbors. Several individual volatiles have been identified as active danger cues. Recent work also shows that plants may integrate multiple volatiles into their defense responses. Here, I

Canopy gaps and the processes that generate them play an integral role in shaping the structure and dynamics of forests. However, it is only with recent advances in remote sensing technologies such as airborne laser scanning that studying canopy gaps at scale has become a reality. Consequently, we still lack an understanding of how the size distribution and spatial organization of canopy gaps varies

Rice (Oryza sativa) plants have porous or hollow organs consisting of aerenchyma, which is presumed to function as a low-resistance diffusion pathway for air to travel from the foliage above the water to submerged organs. However, gas movement in rice plants has yet to be visualized in real time. In the present study involving partially submerged rice plants, the leaves emerging from the water were

The timing of leaf emergence at the shoot apical meristem, or plastochron, is highly regulated in plants. Among the genes known to regulate the plastochron in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), KLUH (KLU), orthologous to the rice (Oryza sativa) PLASTOCHRON1, encodes the cytochrome P450 CYP78A5, and is thought to act through generation of a still unknown mobile signal. As klu mutants display not only

All kingdoms of life have evolved tip-growing cells able to mine their environment or deliver cargo to remote targets. The basic cellular processes supporting these functions are understood with increasing details but the multiple interactions between them lead to complex responses that require quantitative models to be disentangled. Here, I review the equations that capture the fundamental interactions

Osmotic stress influences root system architecture, and polar auxin transport (PAT) is well established to regulate root growth and development. However, how PAT responds to osmotic stress at the molecular level remains poorly understood. In this study, we explored whether and how the auxin efflux carrier PIN-FORMED3 (PIN3) participates in osmotic stress-induced root growth inhibition in Arabidopsis

Leaf functional traits and their covariation underlie plant ecological adaptations along environmental gradients, but there is limited information on the global covariation patterns of key leaf construction traits. To explore how leaf construction traits co-vary across diverse climate and soil environmental conditions, we compiled a global dataset including cell wall mass per unit leaf mass (CWmass)

Receptor-like kinases (RLKs), which constitute the largest receptor family in plants, are essential for perceiving and relaying information about various environmental stimuli. Tremendous progress has been made in the past few decades towards elucidating the mechanisms of action of several RLKs, with emerging paradigms pointing to their roles in cell adaptations. Among these paradigms, Catharanthus

This article is a Commentary on Guo et al. (2021), 232: 98–112.

This article is a Commentary on Liu et al. (2021), 232: 345–355.

Growth is a widely used term in plant science and ecology, but it can have different meanings depending on the context and the spatiotemporal scale of analysis. At the meristem level, growth is associated with the production of cells and initiation of new organs. At the organ or plant scale and over short time periods, growth is often used synonymously with tissue expansion, while over longer time

Plant trait variation drives plant function, community composition and ecosystem processes. However, our current understanding of trait variation disproportionately relies on aboveground observations. Here we integrate root traits into the global framework of plant form and function. We developed and tested an overarching conceptual framework that integrates two recently identified root trait gradients

In the leaf epidermis, stomatal pores allow gas exchange between plants and the environment. The production of stomatal guard cells requires the lineage cells to divide asymmetrically. In this Insight review, we describe an emerging picture of how intrinsic molecules drive stomatal asymmetric cell division in multidimensions, from transcriptional activities in the nucleus to the dynamic assembly of

Wood carbon (C) concentration is a key wood trait that varies widely among tree species, but our understanding of the factors governing this trait is limited, despite reason to hypothesize that wood C varies systematically across environmental gradients. We compiled a novel database of 1145 geo-referenced wood C observations from 415 species, to elucidate climate correlates of wood C concentrations

In Arabidopsis, the high-affinity K+ transporter HAK5 is the major pathway for root K+ uptake when below 100 µM; HAK5 responds to Low-K+ (LK) stress by strongly and rapidly increasing its expression during K+-deficiency. Therefore, positive regulators of HAK5 expression have the potential to improve K+ uptake under LK. Here, we show that mutants of the transcription factor MYB77 share a LK-induced

Dimethylation of histone H3 at lysine 9 (H3K9me2) is associated with heterochromatinization and transcriptional gene silencing in plants. The activation of sets of genes by drought stress is correlated with reduced H3K9me2 levels, but the role of H3K9 methylation in the regulation of drought-stress responses remains elusive. Here, we show that the Jumonji domain-containing H3K9 demethylase JMJ27 positively

Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) can be harnessed to sequence-specifically degrade host transcripts and induce heritable epigenetic modifications referred to as virus-induced post-transcriptional gene silencing (ViPTGS) and virus-induced transcriptional gene silencing (ViTGS), respectively. Both ViPTGS and ViTGS enable manipulation of endogenous gene expression without the need for transgenesis

Spatiotemporal patterns of Spartina alterniflora belowground biomass (BGB) are important for evaluating salt marsh resiliency. To solve this, we created the BERM (Belowground Ecosystem Resiliency Model), which estimates monthly BGB (30-m spatial resolution) from freely available data such as Landsat-8 and Daymet climate summaries. Our modeling framework relied on extreme gradient boosting, and used

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are important contributors to both plant and soil health. Twenty-five years ago, researchers discovered 'glomalin', a soil component potentially produced by AMF, which was unconventionally extracted from soil and bound by a monoclonal antibody raised against Rhizophagus irregularis spores. 'Glomalin' can resist boiling, strong acids and bases, and protease treatment

Phosphorus (P) is very likely the most frequently misspelled nutrient in scientific literature (Lambers & Plaxton, 2015). Plant science, soil science and ecology journals often misspell the term as phosphorous. This error is not picked up by spell-checking software because phosphorous is a valid word. ‘Phosphorous’ is not an alternative spelling for phosphorus, and the difference is not due to British

Plant-soil systems are key for understanding the effects of factors of global change. Recent work has highlighted the general importance of considering the simultaneous incidence of a number of factors or stressors. To help mechanistically dissect the possible interactions of such factors, we here propose three broad groups of mechanisms that may generally lead to non-additivity of responses within

Phosphorus (P) is an essential element for plant growth and development. Vacuoles play a fundamental role in the storage and remobilization of P in plants, while our understanding of the evolutionary mechanisms of creating and reusing P stores are limited. Besides, we also know very little about the coordination of intercellular P translocation, neither the inorganic phosphate (Pi) signaling nor the

Mitochondria play critical roles in generating ATP through oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) and produce both damaging and signaling reactive oxygen species (ROS). They have reduced genomes that encode essential subunits of the OXPHOS machinery. mTERF (Mitochondrial Transcription tERmination Factor-related) proteins are involved in organelle gene expression, interacting with organellar DNA or RNA

Plant stress signalling involves bursts of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which can be mimicked by the application of acute pulses of ozone (O3). Such O3-pulses inhibit photosynthesis and trigger stomatal closure in a few minutes, but the signalling that underlies these responses remains largely unknown. We measured changes in Arabidopsis thaliana gas exchange after treatment with acute pulses of ozone

Early-stage fitness variation has been seldom evaluated at broad scales in forest tree species, despite the long tradition of studying climate-driven intraspecific genetic variation. In this study, we evaluated the role of climate in driving patterns of population differentiation at early-life stages in Pinus sylvestris and explored the fitness and growth consequences of seed transfer within the species

Necrosis- and ethylene-inducing peptide 1 (Nep1)-like proteins (NLPs) constitute a superfamily of proteins toxic to dicot plants, but the molecular basis of this toxicity remains obscure. Using quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis we investigated the genetic variation underlying ion leakage in Arabidopsis plants elicited with MoNLP1 derived from Magnaporthe oryzae. The QTL conditioning MoNLP1 toxicity

Root traits respond to drought in a species-specific manner, but little is known about how soil fungal communities and root traits respond to drought in concert. In a glasshouse experiment, we determined the response of soil pathogens, saprotrophs, mutualistic and all fungi associated with the roots of 24 plant species subjected to drought. At harvest, soil fungal communities were characterized by

● Fusarium graminearum produces the mycotoxin deoxynivalenol (DON) which promotes its expansion during infection on its plant host wheat. Conditional expression of DON production during infection is poorly characterized.

Climacteric ripening of tomato fruit is initiated by a characteristic surge of the production rate of ethylene, accompanied by an increase in respiration rate. As both activities consume O2 and produce CO2, gas concentration gradients develop in the fruit that cause diffusive transport. This may, in turn, affect respiration and ethylene biosynthesis. Gas diffusion in fruit depends on the amount and

A group of MADS transcription factors (TFs) are believed to control temperature-mediated bud dormancy. These TFs are encoded by genes similar to SHORT VEGETATIVE PHASE (SVP) from Arabidopsis and called DORMANCY-ASSOCIATED MADS-BOX (DAM). MADS proteins form transcriptional complexes whose combinatory composition define their molecular function. However, how MADS multimeric complexes control the dormancy

Indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) is a predominant form of active auxin in plants. In addition to de novo biosynthesis and release from its conjugate forms, IAA can be converted from its precursor indole-3-butyric acid (IBA). The IBA-derived IAA may help drive root hair elongation in Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings, but how the IBA-to-IAA conversion is regulated and affects IAA function requires further investigation

Metabolic resistance to 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase (HPPD)-inhibiting herbicides is a threat for controlling waterhemp (Amaranthus tuberculatus) in the United States. We investigated resistance mechanisms to syncarpic acid-3 (SA3), a non-selective, non-commercial HPPD-inhibiting herbicide metabolically robust to Phase I oxidation, in multiple-herbicide-resistant (MHR) waterhemp populations

Temperature is a key control over biological activities from the cellular to the ecosystem scales. However, direct, high precision measurements of surface temperature of small objects such as leaves under field conditions with large variations in ambient conditions remain rare. Contact methods such as thermocouples are prone to large errors. The use of non-contact remote sensing methods such as thermal

Plant growth and development are coordinated by multiple environmental and endogenous signals. Brassinosteroid (BR) and ethylene (ET) have overlapping functions in a wide range of developmental processes. However, the relationship between the BR and ET signalling pathways has remained unclear. Here, we show that BR and ET interdependently promote apical hook development and cell elongation through

To more sustainably mitigate the impact of crop diseases on plant health and productivity, there is a need for broader spectrum, long-lasting resistance traits. Defense Response (DR) genes, located throughout the genome, participate in cellular and system-wide defense mechanisms to stave off infection by diverse pathogens. This multigenic resistance avoids rapid evolution of a pathogen to overcome

Since the 19th century, plant biogeographers have spent much time exploring and expanding upon the work of Alexander von Humboldt, whose 250th birth anniversary was celebrated around the globe in 2019. Humboldt investigated the interplay between geography, climate, and vegetation, through the careful study of spatial variation in climates, soils, and associated life forms, most importantly on mountains

Although most of the tens of thousands of diatom species are photoautotrophs, a small number of heterotrophic species no longer photosynthesize. We sequenced the genome of a nonphotosynthetic diatom, Nitzschia Nitz4, to determine how carbon metabolism was altered in the wake of this trophic shift. Nitzschia Nitz4 has retained its plastid and plastid genome, but changes associated with the transition

Forest ecology traditionally focuses on plant growth and survival, leaving seed production as a major demographic process lacking a framework for how it will be affected by global change. Understanding plant reproductive responses to changing climate is complicated by masting, the annually variable seed production synchronized within populations. Predicting trends in masting is crucial, because masting