News & Views in 2022

The long and trailing vines of most cucurbits represent an undomesticated trait that hampers dense planting and yields, and also incurs a high labour cost. A targeted artificial evolution strategy was developed to suppress stem elongation of cucurbits in a dose-dependent manner, thereby enhancing yield and reducing labour costs.

Nitrate is a nutrient and a signal. Membrane protein NRT1.1 reflects this duality as both a nitrate transporter and sensor. A new perception mechanism has just been discovered: transcription factor NLP7 is also a nitrate sensor. Thus, two distinct but interacting systems perceive nitrate. Are there others?

Intracellular H₂O₂ has emerged as a central player in signalling and stress acclimation, but how specificity is achieved remains elusive. Cytosolic peroxiredoxins play a decisive role as they sense H₂O₂ and transmit the oxidation signal through the formation of disulfide bridges, leading to stomatal closure that reduces pathogen entry.

Pathogen perception in plants is mediated by immune receptors that detect specific pathogen molecules. Members of one diverse receptor family that occurs in all land plants form a structurally conserved activation complex with a shared signalling mechanism.

Plants rely on cell-surface and intracellular immune receptors to activate immune responses and thwart microbial infection. Large-scale comparative genomic analysis reveals matching size variations of the repertoires for both types of receptors across plants during evolution.

Crop production depends to a very large extent on phosphorus fertilization, yet the sustainability of this practice is limited by the predicted exhaustion of phosphorus resources. A new molecular pathway regulating phosphorus accumulation in plants has been identified, with PHO1 found to play a pivotal role in mediating it.

Changes in climate, including increases in the frequency of lightning, will differentially affect the fitness and mortality of tropical tree species. Variation in the sensitivity of species to climate change will in turn lead to shifts in the composition of tropical forests and the services that they provide.

Comparative and evolutionary genomics analyses for more than 1,600 re-sequenced maize lines identified vast amounts of differentially and complementary selected regions and genes among female and male heterotic groups used in modern hybrid maize breeding.

Regulation of organ growth involves multiple pathways that coordinate cell number and size in a process that is highly dependent on nutrient supply and energy levels. The simplicity of the Arabidopsis root tip provides a suitable model for the genetic dissection of plant organ growth regulation.

In the phloem of vascular plants, distinct cell types are arranged in precise positions to ensure effective loading, transport and unloading of photosynthates and signalling molecules. Feedback between transcription factors and mobile peptides triggers and controls the differentiation of phloem at the growing root tip.

Organisms living at elevation are exposed to a constant state of hypoxia compared to those at low altitude. A recent study¹ has shown that flowering plants acclimatize to high altitude through natural variation in molecular oxygen (O₂) sensing, with high-altitude populations exhibiting increased O₂ sensitivity to balance physiological and metabolic outputs. This finding demonstrates convergent mechanisms for altitude adaptation across eukaryotic kingdoms despite differences in the hypoxia-signalling pathways of plants and animals.

Arabidopsis embryonic root development involves the formation of distinct cell types and tissues in a tightly regulated and thereby highly predictable spatio-temporal manner. A crosstalk between maternal and embryonic genes orchestrates division orientation and fate specification to control root development.

The analysis of the 11-gigabase, hexaploid oat genome reveals a mosaic chromosome structure with complex rearrangements related to polyploidization. The high-quality oat reference genome will facilitate the molecular identification of health food traits and the implementation of genomics-based oat breeding.

Worldwide, vitamin D deficiency affects around 1 billion people. A recent study indicates that blocking a duplicated branch of phytosterol biosynthesis in tomato leads to provitamin D₃ accumulation.

How T-DNAs become incorporated into the host chromosome has been a subject of lively debate for the last quarter century. Kralemann et al. report data revealing the mechanism of genomic capture of the right border and validating the role of DNA polymerase θ in the capture of the left border.

Same Cas9 protein, two different jobs: the CRISPR-Combo genome engineering strategy enables simultaneous gene activation and genome editing for different targets through changes to the guide RNA structure.

Theory and single-cell experiments outline a new role for upstream open reading frames in buffering cellular heterogeneity in protein abundance at the translation level.

Extensive genetics and genomics analyses reveal the co-transcriptional processing mode of primary substrates of microRNAs in Arabidopsis, and an unexpected promoting role of R-loops in the process.

Genome sequences and expression data for partly and wholly mycoheterotrophic orchids shed light on shifts in nuclear genes that may help drive dependence on fungi for carbon.

The first complete cycad genome offers an invaluable solution to sex determination, one of the largest conservation challenges in these enigmatic plants.