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.

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

Taking advantage of PacBio long-read sequencing, Hi-C and Bio-Nano technologies, the researchers obtained a 1.58-Gb assembly of high quality. The MYC transcription factor family has undergone expansion in this genome. Most HbMYCs are upregulated in laticifer cells and in the cambial region in response to tapping or treatment of coronatine (a jasmonic acid (JA) mimic), indicating a possible role in

The helicase RTEL1 is conserved in eukaryotes and resolves DNA secondary structures that otherwise would delay replication. As it predominantly resolves G-quadruplexes of G-rich sequences that occur in telomeres, it is required for proper telomere replication. RTEL1 may also be required for replication outside of telomeres, and absence of RTEL1 causes replication stress. However, the link between replication

The proposal by the European Commission for new rules on gene-edited plants aims to align legislation with new developments in biotechnology. Yet concerns remain that have to do not only with biology.

The near-isogenic lines (NILs) (from the cross between the variety 02428 and Teqing) carrying the GY302428 allele exhibited longer panicles, more secondary branches and more grains per panicle than NILs carrying the GY3Teqing allele. The gene was mapped to a LOG-LIKE5 (LOGL5) protein. Knockout and over-expression lines showed altered panicle and grain yield, validating LOGL5 as the causal gene of GY3

Phylogenetic analysis of nearly 1,500 species of Orchidoideae revealed an acceleration in speciation rates from the Miocene to the present day. As this coincided with a period of global climate cooling, the researchers then used statistical models to look at the roles of historic temperature, time and other environmental factors in driving this increase in speciation rates. These models revealed that

The concept of auxin, as a mobile plant substance that controls growth, dates back to the end of the nineteenth century. More than a hundred years of research apparently culminated with the discovery of the main nuclear auxin receptor and the understanding of the core signalling mechanism — from perception of the IAA molecule by receptor TIR1 (transport inhibitor response 1) and its five AFB (auxin