Pub Date : 2025-12-16DOI: 10.1038/s41477-025-02173-9
Wen-Cheng Liu, Barry Halliwell, Christine Helen Foyer
The superoxide radical anion is a fundamental reactive oxygen species, with important functions in plant growth, development and stress responses. A search for ‘superoxide anion’ and ‘plant’ in PubMed retrieved 3,327 publications since the year 2000, with 87 of these publications in 2025 through June. Unfortunately, despite the biological ubiquity of the superoxide anion, inconsistent and chemically inaccurate notation widely persists in the plant biological literature. This Comment clarifies the correct notation for the superoxide anion (O 2 •− ), highlights widespread errors and urges standardization to prevent scientific ambiguity.
{"title":"The critical importance of accurate chemical notation for the superoxide radical (O 2 •− ) in the plant literature","authors":"Wen-Cheng Liu, Barry Halliwell, Christine Helen Foyer","doi":"10.1038/s41477-025-02173-9","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41477-025-02173-9","url":null,"abstract":"The superoxide radical anion is a fundamental reactive oxygen species, with important functions in plant growth, development and stress responses. A search for ‘superoxide anion’ and ‘plant’ in PubMed retrieved 3,327 publications since the year 2000, with 87 of these publications in 2025 through June. Unfortunately, despite the biological ubiquity of the superoxide anion, inconsistent and chemically inaccurate notation widely persists in the plant biological literature. This Comment clarifies the correct notation for the superoxide anion (O 2 •− ), highlights widespread errors and urges standardization to prevent scientific ambiguity.","PeriodicalId":18904,"journal":{"name":"Nature Plants","volume":"12 1","pages":"2-4"},"PeriodicalIF":13.6,"publicationDate":"2025-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145765281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Iron is a crucial micronutrient for plants, but its availability in soil is often limited. Iron deficiency compromises plant growth, and low iron content in crops contributes substantially to the ‘hidden hunger’ that affects human health globally. The elucidation of Strategy I (reduction-based) and Strategy II (phytosiderophore-based) for iron acquisition was a milestone in plant biology and enabled the development of biofortification concepts. However, recent genetic evidence reveals that the boundary between the two strategies is blurred, with many plants possessing elements of both. Here we show that plant iron uptake mechanisms are more complex and diverse than the classical dichotomy suggests. We review evidence for this integrative view and highlight the critical role of microbial siderophores. We explain how plants access iron from microbial siderophores not only indirectly through Strategy I and II pathways but also via the direct uptake of iron–siderophore complexes, an overlooked mechanism that we introduce as Strategy III. We propose three potential routes for this direct uptake and conclude that harnessing Strategy III holds great potential for novel agricultural interventions to enhance iron biofortification and improve human health. The concept of plant iron nutrition has been largely based on two strategies involving iron reduction in the rhizosphere or the secretion of phytosiderophores. Here the authors highlight the importance of microbial siderophores for plant iron nutrition.
{"title":"Integrating microbial siderophores into concepts of plant iron nutrition","authors":"Shaohua Gu, Nanqi Wang, Yiran Zheng, Tianqi Wang, Qirong Shen, Fusuo Zhang, Rolf Kümmerli, Zhong Wei, Yuanmei Zuo","doi":"10.1038/s41477-025-02171-x","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41477-025-02171-x","url":null,"abstract":"Iron is a crucial micronutrient for plants, but its availability in soil is often limited. Iron deficiency compromises plant growth, and low iron content in crops contributes substantially to the ‘hidden hunger’ that affects human health globally. The elucidation of Strategy I (reduction-based) and Strategy II (phytosiderophore-based) for iron acquisition was a milestone in plant biology and enabled the development of biofortification concepts. However, recent genetic evidence reveals that the boundary between the two strategies is blurred, with many plants possessing elements of both. Here we show that plant iron uptake mechanisms are more complex and diverse than the classical dichotomy suggests. We review evidence for this integrative view and highlight the critical role of microbial siderophores. We explain how plants access iron from microbial siderophores not only indirectly through Strategy I and II pathways but also via the direct uptake of iron–siderophore complexes, an overlooked mechanism that we introduce as Strategy III. We propose three potential routes for this direct uptake and conclude that harnessing Strategy III holds great potential for novel agricultural interventions to enhance iron biofortification and improve human health. The concept of plant iron nutrition has been largely based on two strategies involving iron reduction in the rhizosphere or the secretion of phytosiderophores. Here the authors highlight the importance of microbial siderophores for plant iron nutrition.","PeriodicalId":18904,"journal":{"name":"Nature Plants","volume":"12 1","pages":"26-36"},"PeriodicalIF":13.6,"publicationDate":"2025-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145760089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-12DOI: 10.1038/s41477-025-02201-8
Christopher Surridge
{"title":"A vital role for VIA1","authors":"Christopher Surridge","doi":"10.1038/s41477-025-02201-8","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41477-025-02201-8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":18904,"journal":{"name":"Nature Plants","volume":"12 1","pages":"9-9"},"PeriodicalIF":13.6,"publicationDate":"2025-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145743386","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-05DOI: 10.1038/s41477-025-02162-y
Yuyang Xie, Daniel S. Park, Miranda A. Sinnott-Armstrong, Joyce Ho, Tianlong Chen, Alan S. Weakley, Luis J. Aguirre Lopez, Jaein Choi, Marisa M. Laitinen, Nicholas A. Steeves, Chingyan H. Huang, Ran Xu, Xiao Feng
Georeferencing translates textual location information, for instance, on herbarium specimen labels, into geographical coordinates, but traditional methods are labour intensive and costly. Large language models (LLMs), however, have the potential to facilitate the georeferencing of natural history collections. Under standardized testing, some available LLMs achieved a near-human level of accuracy quickly and affordably, such that their incorporation into current workflows will increase the efficiency of georeferencing.
{"title":"Using large language models to address the bottleneck of georeferencing natural history collections","authors":"Yuyang Xie, Daniel S. Park, Miranda A. Sinnott-Armstrong, Joyce Ho, Tianlong Chen, Alan S. Weakley, Luis J. Aguirre Lopez, Jaein Choi, Marisa M. Laitinen, Nicholas A. Steeves, Chingyan H. Huang, Ran Xu, Xiao Feng","doi":"10.1038/s41477-025-02162-y","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41477-025-02162-y","url":null,"abstract":"Georeferencing translates textual location information, for instance, on herbarium specimen labels, into geographical coordinates, but traditional methods are labour intensive and costly. Large language models (LLMs), however, have the potential to facilitate the georeferencing of natural history collections. Under standardized testing, some available LLMs achieved a near-human level of accuracy quickly and affordably, such that their incorporation into current workflows will increase the efficiency of georeferencing.","PeriodicalId":18904,"journal":{"name":"Nature Plants","volume":"11 12","pages":"2446-2450"},"PeriodicalIF":13.6,"publicationDate":"2025-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145680110","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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