Reviews & Analysis

To us, donning a thick coat in the height of summer might seem a silly idea. To plants, it can be a matter of life and death.

Plants adapt to drought stress by reshaping their root architecture, a process in which abscisic acid signalling plays a key role. A recent study defines the mechanism by which abscisic acid signalling mediates sucrose transport from shoots to roots, thus modulating root growth under drought stress.

Incorporation of multiple-nucleotide substitution in prime-editing guide RNAs greatly boosts editing efficiency in rice and maize, advancing precise genome editing in plants.

Mixing maternal and paternal genomes is the base of plant sexual reproduction, but some so-called ‘haploid inducer lines’ lead to the formation of seeds bearing well-developed embryos with solely the maternal genome. A recent study adds a new piece to the puzzle of this enigmatic in planta haploid embryo induction process.

By sieving through the plant genomic literature for the last 20 years, a study uncovered a disconnection between the research locales and plants’ native ranges. Colonialism, both past and present, might be behind this disparity.

Auxin is a master hormone that affects most aspects of plant development. Its inactivation is a key process in regulating auxin levels, but it is only now that we are starting to properly understand the steps involved.

Hormone-induced plant regeneration involves acquisition of pluripotency based on auxin–cytokinin crosstalk. A recent study demonstrates the spatial and functional organization of callus cells and the role of pluripotent middle-layer cells in de novo tissue regeneration.

The levels of plant hormones are broadly determined by their relative rates of biosynthesis and degradation, but a degradation pathway for strigolactones has been missing. Now an enzyme has been discovered that can break down strigolactones and thereby influence plant development.

Light-induced ‘speckles’, or photobodies, have been long known in plants, but the mechanistic basis of their formation along with their cellular function have remained a mystery. Answers to both questions have now been provided.

MicroRNAs are key mobile players in many developmental and stress response pathways within plants. The role of miRNAs has now been expanded to include functioning as exogenously applied effectors and also plant-to-plant communicators of gene regulatory programs.

By adding high-resolution climatic factors to an innovative genotype-by-environment model, a study using high-quality data of global wheat trials demonstrates that climate change affects wheat breeding and that region-specific breeding efforts that target heat-tolerance traits achieve better yield stability in a warming climate.

The genome of a magnoliid, Aristolochia fimbriata, shows no evidence of whole-genome duplication, a feature uniquely shared with Amborella trichopoda, the sister species to all other angiosperms. This ancestral structure of the Aristolochia genome offers great opportunities for comparative genomics.

Real-time quantification of transcription initiation by nascent mRNA labelling reveals noisy transcriptional dynamics and a high level of inter-cell variability in transcription of environmental response genes.

Plants restructure their microbiomes as a ‘cry for help’ against biotic and abiotic stress. A recent study shows that prolonged drought stress causes a permanent shift in the rhizosphere microbiome, and provides clues to which drought-induced microbiome changes might sustain plant health.

The antinutrient pyrimidines vicine and convicine are causative agents of favism in faba bean. They have surprising biosynthetic origins in purine biosynthesis, and the generation of the antinutrient-free faba bean varieties is now on the horizon.

A study of a synthetic auxin response circuit in a heterologous system suggests that hindrance of Mediator complex function by the co-repressor TOPLESS may represent a form of promoter pausing, a mechanism that has not been described in plants before.

Ginkgo biloba is well known for its unique morphological features, key phylogenetic position and long association with humans. A refined, high-quality reference genome of G. biloba helps to fix the problems in the draft release and understand the genetic basis of some important morphological features.

The single-nucleus transcriptional atlas of Arabidopsis endosperm reveals variation in gene imprinting across endosperm compartments and cell cycle stages, and provides new evidence for the role of imprinting in balancing resource allocation in the developing seed.

Polarity cues direct tissue patterning by defining the cell division plane. Proteins containing the IQ67 calmodulin-binding domain govern cell division by establishing and maintaining cell polarity during cytokinesis.

The chloroplast-to-chromoplast transition, occurring when fruits such as tomato turn from green to red, is critical for plant development and is also important agronomically. Now we see a new route to alter the speed of this transition.