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Plant Biology Highlights: Science Articles 2017

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It's almost the end of another amazing year. Undoubtedly, we came across amazing plant science stories all the year round. Like all other researchers, I regularly follow plant-specific journals (The Plant Cell, Plant Physiology, Nature Plants, The Plant Journal, Journal of Experimental Botany, Molecular Plant, Plant, Cell & Environment, Plant, Cell & Physiology, Frontiers in Plant Science, Plant Direct and so on). Apart from that Cell, Science, Nature, PNAS, Nature Communication and other renowned journals cover plant science stories. At the end of this 2017, I've covered few great stories from Science in this post.  Plant-soil feedback and the maintenance of diversity in Mediterranean-climate shrublands Soil biota influence plant performance through plant-soil feedback, but it was unclear whether the strength of such feedback depends on plant traits and whether plant-soil feedback drives local plant diversity. They grew 16 co-occurring plant species with

R2D2: Auxin marker from Star Wars

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Recently "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" is released. Definitely, a great news for Star Wars' fan. I'm going to exploit this opportunity from a plant biologist point and can't resist that. Although I'm a huge fan of BB-8, who can move in any direction with enormous flexibility, this post is about R2D2. From Star Wars series, R2D2 is the robot character and appeared in most of the episodes so far. It appears for a shorter time in The Last Jedi also. It's a very good friend of Luke Skywalker.  R2D2 from plant biology perspective in an auxin-responsive marker. It stands for the Ratiometric version of 2 D2’s. Th simplest way to explain auxin signaling pathway is that ARF (Auxin Responsive Factor) is usually bound to repressor AUX/IAA protein in absence of auxin. Upon the arrival and binding of auxin, ARF becomes free to execute the down-stream event and AUX/IAA is subjected to degradation via ubiquitination. AUX/IAA has 5 domains and here D2 indicates the do

Plant Biology Highlights: Nature Articles 2017

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It's almost the end of another amazing year. Undoubtedly, we came across amazing plant science stories all the year round. Like all other researchers, I regularly follow plant-specific journals (The Plant Cell, Plant Physiology, Nature Plants, The Plant Journal, Journal of Experimental Botany, Molecular Plant, Plant, Cell & Environment, Plant, Cell & Physiology, Frontiers in Plant Science, Plant Direct and so on). Apart from that Cell, Science, Nature, PNAS, Nature Communication and other renowned journals cover plant science stories. At the end of this 2017, I've covered few great stories from Nature in this post.  Reducing phosphorus accumulation in rice grains with an impaired transporter in the node Phosphorus is one of the most indispensable minerals required by plants and animals. In the human body, the strength of bones and teeth is provided by mostly calcium and phosphorus. Plants, including crop plants like rice, have transporters to uptake phospho

Plant Biology Highlights: Cell Articles 2017

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It's almost the end of another amazing year. Undoubtedly, we came across amazing plant science stories all the year round. Like all other researchers, I regularly follow plant-specific journals (The Plant Cell, Plant Physiology, Nature Plants, The Plant Journal, Journal of Experimental Botany, Molecular Plant, Plant, Cell & Environment, Plant, Cell & Physiology, Frontiers in Plant Science, Plant Direct and so on). Apart from that Cell, Science, Nature, PNAS, Nature Communication and other renowned journals cover plant science stories. At the end of this 2017, I've covered few great stories from CELL in this post.  Bypassing Negative Epistasis on Yield in Tomato Imposed by a Domestication Gene During the domestication process, farmers are looking for better traits mostly with much better productivity. All fruits are the result of flowers and the way flowers are arrayed, we call it inflorescence. By controlling the inflorescence architecture, we may g