Showing papers in "Current Opinion in Plant Biology in 2015"

TL;DR: This work highlights recent developments in high-throughput plant phenotyping using robotic-assisted imaging platforms and computer vision-assisted analysis tools.

TL;DR: This work suggests that in most cases, poorly understood processes of tissue formation and cell growth are governing carbon demand, and thus, CO2 uptake, and that this view is not reflecting reality, but emerged from the availability of methods and process understanding at leaf level.

TL;DR: This review focuses on the current mechanistic understanding of ABA signaling in guard cells including the role of the second messenger Ca(2+) as well as crosstalk with biotic stress responses.

TL;DR: Three families of transporters have been identified as key players in intercellular transport of sugars: MSTs, SUTs and SWEETs and the remaining family members await characterization, and could play roles in the gametophyte as well as other important roles in sugar transport in the plant.

TL;DR: Nitrogen is an essential element for plants that is available in agricultural soils mainly as macronutrients in the form of nitrate and ammonium and its subsequent incorporation into amino acids.

TL;DR: This review briefly summarizes the major types of eukaryotic lncRNAs and provides examples of their mechanisms of action, with focus on plant lnc RNAs, mainly in Arabidopsis thaliana.

TL;DR: Molecular analyses of expansins from bacteria have identified residues essential for wall loosening activity and clarified the bifunctional nature of expansin binding to complex cell walls.

TL;DR: Integrated 'omics' analysis, centered on metabolomics with a series of plant resources differing in their flavonoid accumulation, showed experimentally that flavonoids play a major role in antioxidation in vivo and suggested the role of flav onoids in the vacuole.

TL;DR: Recent progress towards understanding the roles of plant AGOs in antiviral defense is reviewed and the strategies that viruses have evolved to modulate, attenuate or suppress AGO antiviral functions are discussed.

TL;DR: The following characterizes some of these reactions, especially those that involve ammonium and nitrate, and highlights the importance of distinguishing both among the nitrogen sources available to plants and among thenitrogen forms within plants when considering plant responses to rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

TL;DR: The next stage of plant genomics will require draft genome refinement, building resources for crop wild relatives, resequencing broad diversity panels, and plant ENCODE projects to better understand the complexities of these highly diverse genomes.

TL;DR: Major advances in the basic understanding of the synthesis of the various wall polymers and its regulation has enabled strategies to alter the qualitative composition of wall materials, including a reduction/alteration of the lignin network to enhancepolysaccharide accessibility, reduction of polymer derived processing inhibitors, and increases in polysaccharides with a high hexose/pentose ratio.

TL;DR: In this work, DELLA and PIF proteins have emerged as hubs in sugar-hormone cross-regulation networks and have been proposed to explain the integration of sugar signalling with hormone pathways.

TL;DR: Recent studies describing the specific roles alternative splicing and RNA surveillance play in plant adaptation to environmental stresses and the regulation of the circadian clock are summarized.

TL;DR: In this review, recent progress and applications of m GWAS in understanding the genetic control of plant metabolism and in interactive functional genomics and metabolomics are presented and directions and perspectives of mGWAS in plants are discussed.

TL;DR: There is a growing amount of work on identifying herbivore elicitors and effectors, but the most significant bottleneck in the discipline is the identification and characterization of plant receptors that perceive these Herbivore-specific cues.

TL;DR: Identification of the major bacterial species associated with algae indicates that specific bacterial groups, particularly the alpha-Proteobacteria, are found more frequently, suggesting that these may have the means to initiate and maintain symbiotic relationships.

TL;DR: Appressorium development is linked to cell cycle checkpoints controlling morphogenesis andSeptin-mediated actin re-modelling is essential for appressorium function, and focal secretion of effectors occurs duringappressorium infection.

TL;DR: Development regulation and epigenetic changes including DNA methylation and histone modifications in polyploids are reviewed, which suggest that epigenetic modifications can alter homoeologous gene expression and reprogram gene expression networks, which allows polyploidy to establish new cytotypes, grow vigorously and promote adaptation in local environments.

TL;DR: Taking a modelling approach, this work explores how the optimal cluster-root strategy depends on soil characteristics, thus offering insights for plant breeders interested in developing crop plants with optimal Cluster-root strategies.

TL;DR: This review covers the current knowledge about functions and features of AGO proteins in both eudicots and monocots and compares their similarities and differences and proposes a new nomenclature for some plant AGOs.

TL;DR: Novel functions of Polycomb repression in plant development as well as advances in understanding PcG complex recruitment, activity regulation and removal in Arabidopsis and other plant species are discussed.

TL;DR: This review highlights some of the most recent findings on nuclear reorganization, histone variants, hist one chaperones, DNA- and histone modifications, and somatic and meiotic heritability in connection with stress.

TL;DR: Recent results have provided strong evidence that a high degree of control over each individual pathway takes place at the post-translational level, and new mechanisms regulating the levels and activity of rate-determining enzymes have been unveiled.

TL;DR: Interestingly, recent data suggest that phosphatase-mediated changes in PM H(+)-ATPase phosphorylation are important in mediating auxin-regulated growth, and dephosphorylation by phosphatases, rather than kinase mediated phosphorylated, may be an important focal point for regulation during plant signal transduction.

TL;DR: Recent findings are summarized that highlight the functions of the effectors from fungal, oomycete and bacterial pathogens in the key steps of infection at the stomata, in the apoplast, and inside the cell.

TL;DR: The current models of how TEs are triggered for silencing, the data supporting each model, and the key future questions in this fast moving field are reviewed.

TL;DR: Cross-kingdom RNAi opens up a vastly unexplored area of research on mobile sRNAs in the battlefield between hosts and pathogens.

TL;DR: Special focus is placed on novel and evolutionarily conserved TOR kinase effectors as positive and negative signaling regulators that control transcription, translation and metabolism to support cell proliferation, growth and maintenance from embryogenesis to senescence in the plant system.

TL;DR: The diversion of sugars away from axillary buds decreases bud release even where hormones are at levels generally considered conducive to bud release, and the impact of sugars on bud outgrowth may be mediated by specific sugar and hormonal signalling pathways.