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Using new optogenetic tools to induce distinct ion fluxes, a study shows that these discrete signals trigger different metabolic and transcriptional pathways that allow plants to respond to specific types of stress.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of the human lysosomal transmembrane protein LYCHOS show that it comprises a transporter-like domain fused to a G-protein-coupled receptor, and that the transporter domain is similar to the plant PIN family.

Nanocatalyst ‘nanozymes’ provide a versatile alternative to natural enzymes. Nanozymes can operate in conditions inimical to enzymes and can catalyse reactions that their natural analogues cannot. This Perspective discusses design principles, strengths, challenges and applications of nanozymes.

Plant antagonists may disrupt the allocation of carbon resources from plants to mutualistic microorganisms. Here, the authors report how plants attacked by cyst nematodes and aphids maintain carbon transfer to arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi through fatty acid transfer whilst the limiting the loss of sugars.

Soil compaction traps ethylene around roots, which causes transcriptional upregulation of Auxin Response Factor1, resulting in decreased root cortical cell wall thickness and thereby promoting root radial expansion.

Species-rich plant communities often have higher productivity than monocultures. Here, the authors analyse biodiversity-ecosystem functioning experiments in grasslands and forests and find that the biodiversity effects on community productivity strengthen over time thanks to shifts in contributions of species with different resource acquisition traits.

Tree spatial data, spatial statistics and dynamical theory reveal the relationship between spatial patterns and population-level interaction coefficients and their consequences for multispecies dynamics and coexistence.

The authors model the impact of future temperature changes on infection risk for 12 major crops from 80 fungal and oomycete plant pathogens. They find increased risk, as well as crop yield, at higher latitudes and predict major shifts in pathogen assemblages in the United States, Europe and China.

Wastewater-based surveillance tends to focus on specific pathogens. Here, the authors mapped the wastewater virome from 62 cities worldwide to identify over 2,500 viruses, revealing city-specific virome fingerprints and showing that wastewater metagenomics enables early detection of emerging viruses.

Gaps in the literature include empirical sustainability assessments of blockchain technology and plant-based seafood alternatives, public health consequences of food deliveries and socio-economic consequences of vertical farming.

Metabolic and proteomic profiles derived from fossilized skeletal remains of animals enable inferences regarding physiological health and disease as well as diet to provide reconstructions of ancient soil, vegetation and palaeoclimate characteristics.

Enhanced rock weathering (ERW) is a carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategy that converts atmospheric CO₂ to stable carbonates by applying minerals to agricultural land. This Perspective discusses the potential difficulties in scaling ERW, covering feedstock availability, impacts on soil–plant systems, uncertainties around CDR efficiency along the land–ocean continuum and socio-economic challenges.

Comparative genomics and high-resolution mass spectrometry reveal the biosynthetic gene clusters, and vast chemical diversity of natural products that they encode, in Photorhabdus and Xenorhabdus, bacteria that interact with hosts as symbionts and entomopathogens.

An approach to discover reactive diazo-based metabolites by capture based on their reactivity coupled to mass spectrometry revealed two previously unknown diazo-containing compounds produced by the human lung pathogen Nocardia ninae using novel biosynthetic chemistry.

A NutNet experiment in 57 grasslands across six continents shows that when herbivores are excluded from grasslands with a long coevolutionary history of grazing plant diversity is reduced, while in grasslands without a long grazing history the evolutionary history of the plant species regulates the response of plant diversity.

In global drylands, soils tend to be more fertile beneath tree, shrub and grass islands. Soil fertility was greater beneath taller and wider plants but was unaffected by either grazing pressure or the type of herbivore.

Clark and colleagues show that plant anatomical diversity evolved episodically over geologic time, reflecting ecological expansion facilitated by reproductive innovations. This is paralleled in animals and fungi, suggesting a general evolutionary mode for multicellular bodyplans.

Plants show diverse strategies for growth, reproduction, and survival, shaped by key aboveground and root traits. This study finds that adding root size traits does not change the global structure of plant strategies, confirming that plant size follows a unified continuum of allometric investment.

Plant functional traits may help distinguish introduced species that will become invasive from those that do not. Here, Divíšek et al. show that functional profiles of naturalized plant species are similar to natives, while those of invasive plant species exist at the edge of the functional trait space.

The authors investigate the broad-scale climatological and soil properties that co-vary with major axes of plant functional traits. They find that variation in plant size is attributed to latitudinal gradients in water or energy limitation, while variation in leaf economics traits is attributed to both climate and soil fertility including their interaction.

Drivers responsible for plant microbiome variation between sites remain elusive. Here, the authors test how soil nutrient addition and herbivore exclusion affect plant microbiota in grasslands worldwide, showing that microbiota diversity responded to environmental variation similarly across sites.

Ji and colleagues show that the specific angiosperm growth-governing DELLA–SLY1/GID2 protein interaction evolved from a broader ancestral affinity, suggesting affinity narrowing to be a general evolutionary driver of interaction specificity.

Multiplexed transcriptomic analyzes show that mid-embryogenesis features the accumulation of ancient and sequence-conserved transcripts in an hourglass pattern, during initial histogenesis and organization of the body plan in diverse plants.

Translating genotype to phenotype is a grand challenge in biology. Here, the authors investigate the utility of genome, transcriptome, and methylome data and their combinations in predicting six plant complex traits and uncovering key genes and genetic interactions in Arabidopsis.

Many plant species depend on frugivores for seed dispersal. Here, the authors investigate plant-frugivore networks in Mauritius, finding that the new interactions gained from the arrival of non-native seed predators are unlikely to compensate for the extinction of seed dispersers.

In a mouse model, environmental immunostimulation in early life led to cross-reactive adaptive immune memory and reduced type II immune responses to allergens, indicating a mechanistic relationship between environmental antigen exposure and subsequent allergy.

Plant-pollinator interactions are not fixed but instead can change seasonally and across years. Here, the authors provide a holistic perspective on how plants and pollinators first enter, then comprise, and ultimately leave interaction networks over time.

The authors theoretically delineate the maximal increases in tree growth that can be expected from increases in plant intrinsic water-use efficiency, which increases with rising CO₂. They highlight environmental and physiological limits on growth in the context of experimental data.

The insurance hypothesis posits that more diverse communities are more stable through time. Here, the authors show that plant biodiversity reduces the spatial variability of productivity in grassland communities, demonstrating that the insurance hypothesis applies also across space.

Human-driven movements and extinctions of species have made plant communities across biomes more homogenous. Here the authors quantify plant vascular species and phylogenetic homogenization across the globe, finding that non-native species naturalisations have been a major driver.

Plant-beneficial bacteria provide multiple benefits to plants. This study constructs a database to couple microbial taxonomy with their plant-beneficial traits, and predicts that fossil-fuel-dependent scenarios could potentially lead to a marked decline of plant-beneficial bacteria abundance in global soils.

A standardized checklist of all known vascular plants shows the distribution of island native and endemic species, identifies their conservation status and highlights the need for actions to conserve them.

Spatiotemporal insight into photoactivation of the prototypical B₁₂ photoreceptor CarH is revealed across nine orders of magnitude in time, identifying a transient adduct that distinguishes it from thermally activated B₁₂ enzymes.

Studies of species interactions tend to focus on single ecological functions. Here, the authors show that plant species tend to participate across different ecological functions in a non-random, nested structure, and some species and functions emerge as unexpected keystone actors of the multifunctional ecosystem.

Not all plants are equally able to support native insects. Here, the authors use data on interactions among >12,000 Lepidoptera species and >2000 plant genera across the United States, showing that few plant genera host the majority of Lepidoptera species; this information is used to suggest priorities for plant restoration.

Butterflies and moths are key indicators of functioning and healthy ecosystems around the world. This Review describes the evolutionary history of the order Lepidoptera and tracks shifts in researchers’ understanding of the clade in the genomic era; it also explores biogeographic patterns and conservation efforts for threatened species.

Water content in plants increasing while the surrounding soil moisture decreases, measured through remote sensing on multiple continents, may be suggestive of a pulse–reserve mechanism that has not been observed on a large spatial scale before. This behaviour, triggered or rendered inactive by certain thresholds, is seen in biomes other than arid lands.