Trends in Plant Science最新文献

Despite growing evidence that viruses exploit liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS), the significance of LLPS during infection remains elusive. Two recently published papers reveal that plant viruses use LLPS to reprogram host systems, promoting replication and immune suppression. These studies redefine LLPS as an active regulatory hub in plant-virus interactions.

New approaches to engineering plant genomes have the potential to improve agriculture. However, transgenes insertion and tissue culture have become bottlenecks to genome-editing technology becoming widely adopted and achieving the promise of targeted editing. Recent developments in particle bombardment and viral vector-mediated delivery can open doors to overcome these limitations.

Herd immunity describes indirect disease protection in heterogeneous, partly immune populations. This concept is rarely discussed for agricultural crops, although crop heterogeneity can reduce pathogen transmission. We discuss disease suppression in diversified crop fields and illustrate how entire fields could benefit from treatment of individual plants, leading to herd immunity.

The 'cry-for-help hypothesis' (CHH) is broadly used to study how root exudate modulation under stress influences recruitment of beneficial microbes in the rhizosphere. Here, we explored common misconceptions and limitations of the CHH and advocate for the reassessment of this prevalent hypothesis to unfold the ecological complexities of plant-microbe interactions.

Enhancing seed oil content significantly benefits both human welfare and environmental sustainability. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/CRISPR-associated protein (CRISPR/Cas) and artificial intelligence (AI) are transformative tools for crop trait improvement. A recent study by Wang and colleagues reported that AlphaFold-guided CRISPR genome editing of SWEET10 boosts oil contents, highlighting a breakthrough in precision crop engineering.

Salicylic acid (SA) is a vital phytohormone produced from isochorismate in arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana). However, SA in most plant species is produced from phenylalanine, a pathway that has long remained unresolved. Three recent studies filled this major knowledge gap and elucidated a multistep SA biosynthesis pathway that is ancestral in the plant kingdom.

Lignocellulosic biomass offers an abundant and renewable feedstock for sustainable biofuel and biochemical production, but the hemicellulose xylan limits its efficient utilization. Ge et al. present an elegant biomass engineering approach in sweet sorghum by vascular tissue-specific expression of an endo-1,4-β-xylanase to enhance lignocellulosic saccharification to boost the bioeconomy.

A significant proportion of flowers in crop plants fail to produce seeds, particularly under heat and drought stress. This outcome reflects a regulated developmental process of reproductive abortion, shaped by a complex interplay of genetic, hormonal, and environmental factors that limit crop yield. Unlike abscission, reproductive abortion can occur at multiple developmental stages. In this review, we examine how internal and external cues disrupt the development of florets, ovules, embryos, and seeds in major food crops, including cereals, legumes, and brassicas, under both optimal and stress conditions. Drawing from research in arabidopsis and extending to crop systems, we identify conserved and crop-specific mechanisms, highlight critical knowledge gaps, and propose strategies to enhance reproductive resilience and seed set under abiotic stresses.

We learn early on how to tell trees apart from other plants. However, it has proved hard to distinguish trees from other plants at the genetic level, and it is believed that there are no unique 'tree genes'. With the rapid increase in available tree genomes, we can perform new comparative and evolutionary analyses of plant life histories and growth forms. Here we provide a fresh perspective on the genetic foundation for woodiness and perenniality in angiosperms by analyzing selection pressures and gene family evolution in the rosids using genomic data. We examine genes distinguishing trees from herbs and discuss future directions for uncovering the genetic factors that define a tree in this new era of tree genomics.