Research articles

Rising CO₂ levels have been thought to potentially increase plant growth due to improved fertilization, but such a general effect is spatially and temporally affected by precipitation. Grassland experiments show constraints and increases in the fertilization effect due to seasonal-based precipitation, inferring that any potential plant growth could be mitigated by natural rainfall changes.

Eukaryotic mRNAs often contain upstream open reading frames for small peptides. However, this study reports a truly bicistronic transcript in Arabidopsis, which encodes both CELL DIVISION CYCLE 26, a cell cycle regulator, and TRIPHOSPHATE TUNNEL METALLOENZYME 3, an inorganic polyphosphatase.

The symbiosis of mycorrhizal fungi and roots involves invasion of plant cells, followed by collapse of the intracellular fungal arbuscules. Ultra-structural details of this interaction show continuous formation of extracellular vesicles at the peri-arbuscular space.

A quintuple mutant—affected in gibberellin signalling, as well as showing faster and enhanced growth compared to the wild type—is used as a tool to understand the physiological basis of source–sink coordination.

This study reports a near-complete genome of Antirrhinum majus L., provides insights into gene and genome duplication events, and reveals the genetic basis underlying complex traits of snapdragon, such as flower asymmetry and self-incompatibility.

A study introduces curcumin biosynthesis in Arabidopsis by expressing the turmeric genes DIKETIDE-CoA SYNTHASE and CURCUMIN SYNTHASE 2, and the monomers curcumin and phenylpentanoids were successfully incorporated into the lignin cell wall to enhance biomass processing.

Autophagy controls protein homeostasis. AUTOPHAGY-RELATED PROTEIN 8 and ABNORMAL SHOOT3 interact to promote endosome trafficking, as well as to regulate protein degradation during senescence independently from the canonical autophagy machinery.

Ecosystem services from forests depend on the species therein, but the type of species diversity may also determine the level of services that the forest can provide. Swedish national forest data show that while mixed stands often provide more services than monoculture forests, it is the relative abundance of species within the mix that can be the key determinant, and necessary for understanding in forest management.

Capacity for carbon capture and storage in forests may not be monolithic but instead a function of complex dynamics of forest strata and age. The smaller trees that make up the understory in African tropical forests store their carbon longer as compared to sub-canopy and canopy trees and they represent a disproportionately large share of the carbon sink, in spite of their small size.

Phosphorus is one of the essential nutrients for all living organisms. Plants and fungi store phosphate in their vacuoles. Multiple plant influx transporters have been reported to import phosphate to the vacuoles. Now, two new phosphate efflux transporters are shown to be important for phosphate export from the vacuole in rice and probably other land plants.

This study characterized the unique protein subunit composition and structure of Arabidopsis mitochondrial ribosomes using biochemical assays and cryo-electron microscopy. Ten subunits are pentatricopeptide (PPR) proteins, among which rPPR1 functions as a translation factor.

A high-quality reference genome of the stout camphor tree reveals its genome evolution and supports that magnoliid and eudicot lineages share more common ancestry relative to monocots.

A study examined transcriptome dynamics of Arabidopsis halleri weekly for two years and bihourly for the four equinoxes/solstices, revealing that the change of temperature rather than day length dominantly defines the seasonal transcriptome oscillations.