Articles in 2020

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 2 encompasses targets ranging from the eradication of hunger and malnutrition to ensuring a sustainable food production system. Conflicts between these goals gives rise to gaps in our understanding that hamper attempts at evidence-based policy-making.

Climate-resilient crops are essential for farmers to adapt to climate change. This scoping review identifies extension services and outreach as the most important factors for their adoption by small-scale producers in low- and middle-income countries.

Livestock support the livelihoods of a billion people in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and improved feeding could increase productivity. However, this scoping review highlights serious gaps in evidence around the adoption of new feeding practices.

Photosynthesis in tropical forests shows an apparent sensitivity to temperature. This Letter teases apart the effects of temperature and correlated atmospheric water demand on ecosystem productivity.

Polar cell growth requires spatiotemporal regulation of Rho of plants (ROPs) small G proteins in membrane domains. In addition to localized activation of membrane-anchored ROPs, a mechanism for their local inactivation has now been identified.

Cell polarity that requires asymmetrical distribution of cellular components is important for plant growth and development. Here the authors identify a group of ARMADILLO domain proteins that collectively act in the polarized cell expansion of tip-growing cells by recruiting Rho of plant 1 (ROP1) enhancer GTPase-activating proteins and therefore ROP signalling to distinct plasma membrane sites.

The structure of a complex of native plant photosystem I, its electron donor plastocyanin and acceptor ferredoxin, has been solved using a new cryo-EM technique, revealing the contact sites and modes of interaction between the interacting electron carriers.

A transgenic Venus flytrap expressing a fluorescent calcium sensor allows real-time live quantification of calcium waves triggered by sensory hair movement. The study suggests that calcium levels represent the molecular basis for the memory effect that requires two stimulations within 30 s.

A new multicolour tool named PlaCCI allows for visualization and quantification of discrete cell cycle phases thanks to the sequential expression of three specific fluorescent markers.

The primary miR858a transcript encodes a micro-peptide (miPEP) that regulates its own expression. This mechanism regulates the flavonoid biosynthesis pathway. It is the second miPEP functionally characterized in plants.

The study shows that the cold-induced Polycomb-repressed chromatin state at FLOWERING LOCUS C is meiotically stable in female but not male gametogenesis. This epigenetic cold memory is maternally inherited to the zytote and early embryos.

Rubisco is a complex, ubiquitous protein composed of eight large and eight small subunits. By assembling Rubisco in bacterial cells, the specific characteristics of individual small subunits have been investigated with a view to engineering more efficient carbon fixation.

In plants, Rubisco is composed of 16 subunits and requires multiple chaperones to assemble. Features of individual tobacco Rubisco subunits that affect kinetic properties are investigated by coexpression with chaperones in Escherichia coli.

Plant roots have to orchestrate their growth pattern to access available nutrients. Root architecture is governed by auxin that locally steers growth and development of lateral roots, thereby increasing the uptake capacity. A new mechanism for ammonium acquisition by influencing cellular auxin import has been defined.

In the Gospel According to Matthew Chapter seven, Verse five, Jesus says “first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye”. We should remember this entreaty before too casually casting accusations of ‘plant blindness’.