Volume 9 Issue 5, May 2023

Genome editing provides a unique opportunity to create produce benefiting consumers, but success depends on risk-proportional regulation. Existing seedless fruit varieties such as watermelon, mandarin oranges and grape are strongly preferred by consumers and support healthy diets without pre-market regulatory approvals required for commercialization. Replicating the seedless trait in other fruits is a promising way to increase consumption. Here we compare the differential treatment by various regulatory systems of identical products made by inserting an ancient seedless allele into muscadine grape (Vitis rotundifolia) using traditional breeding or templated or non-templated genome editing tools.

Short-term heat stress affects the morphology and function of the plant Golgi apparatus in a reversible manner. The autophagy component AUTOPHAGY 8 relocalizes to heat stress-induced vacuolated Golgi cisternae and contributes to their restoration, revealing a role of this protein outside of the canonical autophagy pathway.

Only a limited subset of angiosperms produce cannabinoids. Evidence for the independent evolution of cannabinoid biosynthesis was discovered in the South African plant Helichrysum umbraculigerum. This discovery provides an alternative set of enzymes that will expand the synthetic biology toolbox for those interested in manipulating the pathway for drug discovery.

Hormone-dependent suberin deposition is a key process in root development and in response to biotic and abiotic stresses. A recent study demonstrates that long- and short-distance transport of abscisic acid (ABA) and gibberellin (GA) via four members of the nitrate and peptide transporter family (NPFs) is crucial for endodermal suberization in roots.

The flat structure of a leaf blade enables it to function as a photosynthetic organ for efficient light capture. The leaf rim or the edge-most region of leaf margin directs the planar growth of both leaves and ligules in grasses.

Photorespiration is known to be involved in carbon flux in plants, enabling the carbon lost during RuBisCO oxygenation to be recovered. We show that NPF8.4 is a transporter responsible for sequestering the photorespiratory carbon intermediate glycerate into vacuoles during nitrogen depletion, elucidating a novel function for photorespiration in nitrogen flux.

Callixylon wood from the Late Devonian (approximately 360 Myr ago) is found to contain tyloses, swellings of parenchyma cells into adjacent water-conducting cells that develop in response to embolism and pathogen infection.

Manipulating CENH3 can induce haploids in plants. This study demonstrates a strategy to improve both the procedure and efficiency of maternal and paternal haploid production by manipulating temperature and provides valuable insights into the function of CENH3.

Mutant combinations of four AUXIN RESPONSE FACTORs in tomato by CRISPR–Cas9 technology reveal their dual function in inhibiting fruit set before pollination while activating fruit growth after fertilization.

Grass ligules comprise the boundary between the leaf base and the photosynthetic blade; their homology has been debated for over 200 years. Cell-specific gene expression analyses suggest that ligules are homologous to the margins of the leaf base.

Plant-specific kinesin ARK is identified as a major microtubule plus-end-directed transporter in Physcomitrella (moss). ARK motility-dependent tip localization of actin regulators is required for proper cell polarization and growth.

This study reveals that short-term acute heat stress causes vacuolation of the Golgi apparatus, whereafter autophagy-related protein 8 (ATG8) translocates to the cisternal membrane and recruits CLATHRIN LIGHT CHAIN 2 (CLC2) to facilitate Golgi reconstruction by promoting the budding of ATG8-positive vesicles.

AtGBPL3 is a dynamin-related GTPase that functions in mitotic nuclear envelope formation. It interacts with lamina components to mediate nuclear morphogenesis and transcriptional repression during interphase.

The authors identified a sub-clade of NPF transporters that orchestrates GA12 long-distance shoot-to-root translocation. Once in the phloem unloading zone, ABA and GA are loaded into pericycle vacuoles and then slowly released to induce endodermal suberin formation in the maturation zone.

NPF8.4 is responsible for sequestering the photorespiratory carbon intermediate glycerate into vacuoles. This study of NPF8.4 has identified the role of photorespiration in N fluxes in response to short-term N depletion.

This study reveals a cannabinoid biosynthetic pathway in Helichrysum umbraculigerum, a plant genetically distant from Cannabis, providing a potential source of new cannabinoids and metabolic engineering tools.

A cryo-EM structure of a photosystem I supercomplex, PSI–LHCI–LHCII–Lhcb9, from the moss Physcomitrium patens, shows its Lhcb9-mediated assembly via an intermediate form containing large amounts of light-harvesting complexes I and II.