Plant Sciences

Highlights

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Stress response in plants involves chromatin re-organization.
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This includes changes in nuclear structure, histone variants, chaperones, and modifications.
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Chromatin changes in response to stress bear the potential for somatic and/or meiotic inheritance.

Stress defense in plants is elaborated at the level of protection and adaptation. Dynamic changes in sophisticated chromatin substructures and concomitant transcriptional changes play an important role in response to stress, as illustrated by the transient rearrangement of compact heterochromatin structures or the modulation of chromatin composition and modification upon stress exposure. To connect cytological, developmental, and molecular data around stress and chromatin is currently an interesting, multifaceted, and sometimes controversial field of research. This review highlights some of the most recent findings on nuclear reorganization, histone variants, histone chaperones, DNA- and histone modifications, and somatic and meiotic heritability in connection with stress.

Nitrogen (N) is an essential element for plants that is available in agricultural soils mainly as macronutrients in the form of nitrate and ammonium. Interplay between high-affinity and low-affinity transporters ensures efficient uptake from the soil even under highly fluctuating N availability. After uptake, N assimilation comprises the reduction of nitrate to ammonium and its subsequent incorporation into amino acids. Amino acids, but also nitrate, are transported from root to shoot and vice versa. Most steps of N transport and assimilation are tightly controlled by a regulatory network acting both cell-autonomously and systemically. N sensors, transcription factors and further regulatory players have been identified during recent years, elucidating parts of the huge puzzle that represents the efficient use of N by plants.

We've all heard this paradoxical claim: If we want tangible, scientific solutions to society's urgent problems, then we need to invest in basic, curiosity-driven research that’s not motivated by its potential for practical applications. As Vannevar Bush, director of the United States government's chief science agency during World War II famously put it: "Basic research is scientific capital." By investing in basic research— research that is "performed without thought of practical ends"—we create "the fund from which the practical applications of knowledge must be drawn."

It's easy to pay lip service to this idea, but harder to put it into practice, especially when we have to choose how to spend a limited budget. Basic research can seem terribly inefficient. Its practical results are hard to predict, and they often have little to do with the original research goals. Vannevar Bush argued that the best way to support basic research is to give federal funding to academic scientists, who are not under pressure to produce immediately practical results and are “free to pursue the truth wherever it may lead." But this approach is often hard for many to accept because scientists sometimes undertake what seem like wasteful projects with no practical benefits. This leads to accusations that scientists are making poor decisions—in a recent op-ed written with Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chair of the House Science Committee, complained that, "The academic community forgets that federal science funding should be in the national interest."

Highlights

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Auxin transport mediated by PIN proteins is an important regulator of development across land plants.
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There have been complex evolutionary changes in structure, function, and expression of PIN proteins between and within major plant groups.
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However, current evidence suggests that many major evolutionary innovations in plant development occurred independently of innovations in PIN proteins.

Many aspects of development in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana involve regulated distribution of the hormone auxin by the PIN-FORMED (PIN) family of auxin efflux carriers. The role of PIN-mediated auxin transport in other plants is not well understood, but studies in a wider range of species have begun to illuminate developmental mechanisms across land plants. In this review, I discuss recent progress in understanding the evolution of PIN-mediated auxin transport, and its role in development across the green plant lineage. I also discuss the idea that changes in auxin biology led to morphological novelty in plant development: currently available evidence suggests major innovations in auxin transport are rare and not associated with the evolution of new developmental mechanisms.

I really like this approach to writing review summary. The question is, how does material move between the ER and Golgi - through vesicles or through tubes? The answer isn't simple, as there are data to support both answers, and other possibilities as well. So, "in this article, four leading plant cell biologists attempted to resolve this issue. Unfortunately, their opinions are so divergent and often opposing that it was not possible to reach a consensus. Thus, we decided to let each tell his or her version individually."

http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/168/2/393.abstract

Terrific - Gina Kolata, science writer for the New York Times, looks at the new paper by Michael Palmgren's group out in Trends in Plant Science. They propose a new term, Rewilding, for introducing ancestral genes into today's crop to increase their resiliance to stress. Several other esteemed plant scientists are quoted in this very good story too.

The TIPS article is here: "Feasibility of new breeding techniques for organic farming"  http://www.cell.com/trends/plant-science/abstract/S1360-1385(15)00112-0