Plants, if only hearing this word makes your heart beat quicker, then you have come the right place. While many view them as just decorations. You know they can be so much more than we give them credit to. They are essential for us. They give us the oxygen we breathe and the food we eat. But did you know plants can do calculus? That they can detect nutrients, and grow actively towards them? That they use insects, not only for pollinating their flowers, but also as defence against other insects? On this plant science blog, I discuss the latest findings about plants.
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Latest Blogs
Subtle nudges
Most of us know penicillin as an antibiotic. It is made by the soil dwelling Penicillin rubens fungus. Now this fungus has many brothers and sisters, some of which like to nestle themselves between the cells of roots. For the plant this is positive as colonized plants grow more roots. Now a new study by…
Keep readingHandiness in flowers
Twist to the left, twist to the right. Mirror image flowers place their male and female organs on opposite side of the flower midline, preventing self-fertilization. But to ensure pollination, it helps if half of the flowers of a species are oriented the opposite way. Now a group of international researchers report that how South…
Keep readingFuelling the repair
When plants are wounded, they quickly set to heal themselves. These unplanned cell divisions and growth require extra fuel. How the plant makes sure this fuel reaches the wound site is not clear. Now a new paper from Israeli scientists shows that while this extra fuel reaches the wound site in the form of sucrose,…
Keep readingBuffering genetic variation
Most genetic differences within species do not result in a phenotype. Instead, their effects are buffered away. One of the ways plants and other organisms do this is by providing help with protein folding, preventing misfolding. Now a group of Chinese scientists have found a potentially second way plants do this, via their spliceosome.
Keep readingThe hidden layer of genetic flexibility
Plants have fascinating genomes, complex with many multiplicated genes. It is one of the reasons they can produce many complex compounds. So, when I heard that they have those so-called extracellular circular DNA I was hooked.
Keep readingPlant organ growth inside story
The view was that the shape of plant tissues, including those of grains and fruits, is controlled by the pressure that the outermost tissue layers give to the inner tissues. A kind of mechanical feedback. But now a new study shows that the inner tissues also have a say in this.
Keep readingSensing the point of no return
When is it time to die, that is the question that lays behind the latest study of a group of Swedish researchers. They found that sensing depleted levels of the amino acid arginine tell the cell to throw in the towel.
Keep readingStrengthening the walls
Plants, like all organisms don’t like an excess of salt. One of its ways to deal with salt stress is to strengthen their cell walls. FER, a receptor in the cell membrane is one of the key proteins in regulating this. Now a group of Chinese researchers show that key to this is the small…
Keep readingBending due to gravity
Place a plant on its side and its roots and shoots quickly grow down and up again. The plant sensed that the direction of gravity changed and adjusted its growth accordingly. But how plants regulate this temporary adjustment was not exactly known. Now a group of international researchers show that one part of the answer…
Keep readingTurning red
Plants are wonderful chemical factories. So when synthetic food dyes get banned it is only logical to look for plant produced alternatives, like betalain which is naturally produced by beetroots and their relatives. A new study by American researchers explores the possibility of getting other plant species to produce betalain.
Keep readingSwitching from 2D into 3D
Life as we know it happens in 3D. So, when a group of international researchers found a gene that appears to have a role in the transition from 2D into 3D development they where excited.
Keep readingThe old die to protect the young
Flooding gives plants a big blow. Still, if the flooding doesn’t take too long, plants can survive due to a number of survival techniques. One of these is the shedding of old leaves. Now Dutch researchers show in a new study what happens after flooding.
Keep readingShifting DNA markings
Markings on the DNA help plant cells ‘remember’. Who they are. In what developmental stage they are. Their environment. Now a new study in Communications Biology by Chinese researchers shows that during the early stages of embryo development these DNA marks shift frequently.
Keep readingHooked hairs
Sometimes when you look closely at something, you see something new. That is what a group of American researchers found when they looked closely at bean seedlings. In Science Advances they report about the up until now unknown hooked hairs on these seedlings.
Keep readingClosing the trap
Carnivorous sundews actively capture their prey. But in contrast to the related Venus flytraps, sundews are not responding to touch or other mechanical stimulants. Now Chinese researchers show that a small peptide, glutathione, likely released by the captured fly, signals for the trap to close.
Keep readingHow plants photosynthesize
Sometimes it seems that plants grow spontaneously. This all is due to maybe one of the coolest tricks of plants in that they produce their own food. Photosynthesis plays a major role in this process.
Keep readingWhere almond trees store energy can affect yield
Perennial plants store carbohydrates to bridge carbon shortages. Like those in the winter for example. Now American researchers show that it matters where a plant creates those carbohydrate stores.
Keep readingCO2 regulates stomata opening
Stomata, the pores on the underside of the leaf, let CO2 in for photosynthesis and water vapour out. Now researchers show that by an increasing of CO2 in the atmosphere plants are not using this to fix more energy but for saving water.
Keep readingSounding the alarm
Early detection of a pathogen attack can prevent the spread of an infection. But how this early detection is then translated into warning for the rest of the plant is not known. Now British researchers show in Nature Plants using a reporter system that the alarm passes through the plant much faster than first thought.
Keep readingCreating an oxygen-restricted niche
Plants, just like us, need oxygen, but their growth centre, there where the leaves and stems emerge, is surprisingly low on oxygen. There, there is four to six times less than in the air outside the plant. Now a group of international researchers show in Molecular Plant how a plant establishes and maintains this low…
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