Showing papers in "Current Opinion in Plant Biology in 1998"

TL;DR: Only a few low molecular mass signals, including jasmonic acid, ethylene and salicylic acid, upregulate the expression of scores of defense-related genes, which fine-tunes its defense gene expression against aggressors.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that jasmonic acid and ethylene are important for the induction of nonspecific disease resistance through signaling pathways that are distinct from the classical systemic acquired resistance response pathway regulated by salicylic acid.

TL;DR: A large number of new components involved in transcriptional regulation of phenylpropanoid genes have been identified, including transcription factors and novel proteins that function upstream of DNA-binding proteins.

TL;DR: It is increasingly apparent that plant genomes can sense and respond to the presence of foreign DNA in certain sequence contexts and at multiple dispersed sites, and how nuclear defense systems are activated poses major challenges for the future.

TL;DR: The solution of their three-dimensional structures together with studies on their molecular diversity and substrate specificity is providing new insights into the function and classification of these enigmatic enzymes.

TL;DR: Transcriptional activation of genes is a vital part of the plants defence system against pathogens and cis-acting elements within the promoters of many of these genes have recently been defined and investigators have started to isolate their cognate trans-acting factors.

TL;DR: Protective metabolic adaptations alter physiological reactions of the whole plant, and Paramount among the mechanisms are oxygen radical scavenging, maintenance of ion uptake and water balance, and reactions altering carbon and nitrogen allocation, such that reducing power is defused.

TL;DR: Plants defend themselves against pathogen attack by activating a multicomponent defense response that requires recognition of the pathogen and initiation of signal transduction processes that finally result in a spatially and temporally regulated expression of individual defense reactions.

TL;DR: Significant advances in Ca2+ and calmodulin signalling in whole plants and individual cells have been recently reported and contributions have been made to the study of the modification of gene expression by osmotic, light and gravity signals and the growth of root hairs and pollen tubes.

TL;DR: In Arabidopsis, the study of trichomes, leaf epidermis and hypocotyl cells sheds new light on the developmental regulation of this process, and its relation to cell expansion.

TL;DR: The nitrate assimilation pathway has been the matter of intensive research during the past decade and a number of questions remain to be elucidated regarding the physiological roles of these transporters and the regulation of their expression.

TL;DR: The molecular details of sugar sensing and sugar-mediated signal transduction pathways are unclear but recent results suggest that hexokinase functions as an important plant sugar sensor in a way that is similar to that found in yeast.

TL;DR: Data from extensive DNA sequencing of resistance gene families are indicating that the leucine-rich repeat motif is an important determinant of gene-for-gene specificity and that intergenic DNA sequence exchange is a major contributor to R gene diversity.

TL;DR: Transduction of light dependent signals to redox sensitive kinases in photosynthetic membranes modulates energy transfer to the photochemical reaction centres and regulates biogenesis, stability and turnover of thylakoid protein complexes.

TL;DR: The manipulation of sink to source relations has been subject to extensive plant breeding programs aiming to improve harvest index and thereby crop yield and it has become apparent that this metabolic channelling needs to be exploited by using stage- and cell-specific promoters in attempts to increase sink strength.

TL;DR: Abscisic acid-mediated inhibition of gibberellin-stimulated responses seems to depend on the activation of a phospholipase D during induction of alpha-amylase in barley aleurone cells as well as on a putative acetyltransferase involved in elongation growth.

TL;DR: The most recent major advances in the study of programmed cell death (PCD) in plants include the observation that peptide inhibitors of caspases inhibit the hypersensitive response.

TL;DR: The symbiosis between Rhizobium bacteria and their host plants is dependent on the specific recognition of signal molecules produced by each partner, and the most recent insights into their interconnection include: advances in the use of transgenic leguminous plants containing reporter gene constructs for studying the effect of the signal molecules.

TL;DR: Recent developments are providing recombination-based technologies for creating targeted alterations in the architecture of plant genomes with potential for generating novel allelic arrays on chromosomes.

TL;DR: During the last decade a genetic approach based on the Arabidopsis 'triple response' to the hormone ethylene has allowed the identification of numerous components of the signal transduction pathway.

TL;DR: In this article, it was shown that 5′-adenylylsulfate (APS) sulfotransferase and APS reductase are the same enzyme.

TL;DR: Over the past five years, transgenic strains of various major cereals have been produced, with transformation of rice and maize being most common, but Agrobacterium-mediated transformation is rapidly becoming the method of choice.

TL;DR: The isolation of grass genes that are homologous to dicot floral homeotic genes in combination with recent advances in reverse genetic technology and improvements in cereal transformation opens the door for understanding molecular mechanisms of grass flower development.

TL;DR: Pictures of how sex-determining signals are perceived to activate or repress male- or female-specific genes are emerging by studying the interactions among these genes.

TL;DR: The studies confirm the importance of RLKs in diverse plant processes, yet major challenges remain, including identifying ligands that activate RLKS and characterizing downstream pathways.

TL;DR: Resistance gene clusters appear to evolve more rapidly than other regions of the genome, and domains responsible for recognitional specificity, such as the leucine-rich repeat domain, are subject to adaptive selection.

TL;DR: The essential role that the retinoblastoma pathway plays in controlling cell cycle progression and, presumably, some developmental events is revealed and the identification of the downstream targets and upstream modulators of CDKs is identified.

TL;DR: Advances are reinforcing the idea that phenotypic evolution can proceed via changes at few loci of large effect and that promoter evolution may be an important and frequent mechanism.

TL;DR: These molecular and genetic markers will serve as stepping stones towards uncovering tip growth pathways in plants by identifying Ca2+ gradients and Rho GTPases in pollen tubes and a series of mutants affecting root hair tip growth.

TL;DR: The repertoire of cis-regulatory elements has increased to a level of sophistication that offers considerable spatial and temporal control over transgene expression and these factors must now be included with the standard considerations of transcriptional and translational enhancers of gene expression duringtransgene design.