Paper review – Page 2

Sensing 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.

Strengthening 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 molecule phosphatidic acid.

Bending 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 is the temporarily activating the auxin response factor ARF19.

Turning 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.