To establish infections, plant viruses effect profound alterations to host physiology that disturb endogenous processes and contribute to the development of disease symptoms. Conti et al. summarise recently described...
Archive - March 2017
botanyone
One picture is worth a thousand words – a community repository is priceless
A community repository of plant illustrations
Anne Osterrieder
Should I fight or should I grow? Cytokinins in defence-growth trade-offs
Constitutive defence activation in plants leads to resistance to a broad-spectrum of pathogens, but also frequently to stunted growth and reduced seed sets; how do plants decide whether to defend against infection or to...
Phytomer development in a C4 grass
The morphology of almost all grasses can be conceptualized as a hierarchical arrangement of subunits, termed phytomers. Therefore, knowledge of phytomer growth and development serves as a basis to elucidate the rhythm...
AoBPLANTS
Antiviral innate and adaptive immunity mechanisms
This review article summarises the molecular mechanisms of the antiviral immune system in plants and reports the latest breakthroughs relating to plant defence against viruses. Particular attention is given to the...
Botany in the 317 years-long century…
The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century. Yota Batsaki, Sarah Burke Cahalan and Anatole Tchikine (Editors). Dumbarton Oaks, 2016. Notwithstanding the importance of botany to the future well-being and survival...
Nigel Chaffey
The role of nitrogen in plant defence
Plants need nitrogen (N) for growth, development and defence against abiotic and biotic stresses. The widespread use of artificial N fertilisers and the agricultural impact of N nutrition on disease development have...
Revising Corner’s rule: how to best partition twig leaf area
Corner’s rule states that in woody plants, twigs (current-year shoots) with thicker stems support larger leaves. Larger leaf areas require thicker twigs for hydraulic and mechanical support, but a question remains...
Animal NLRs provide structural insights into plant NLR function
Since the characterisation of the gene-for-gene concept in plant disease resistance by Flor in the 1940s, resistance (R) genes have played a central role in breeding resistant crops. Gene-for-gene resistance is now...
Seed priming confers rice cold tolerance during seed germination
Mechanization and simplification are inevitable trends in agriculture to decrease input demands and simultaneously improve resource use efficiency. Dry direct-seeded rice is a resource-saving cropping system and has...
Snow addition and warming impacts on arctic leaf anatomy and gas exchange
Climatic changes can result in modified leaf anatomy and gas exchange in arctic plants. In a one-year-old field experiment in Greenland, Schollert et al. investigate the effects of increased snow depth and warming on...
Sharing scientific code: A short introduction to Git and GitHub
Planning to work with code? Git and Github are free tools to help share your source code.
Ian Street
New insights into the evolution of the florally diverse Detarioid legumes
The Brazilian tree Goniorrhachis marginata is the only species of its genus in the bean family (Leguminosae) with striking flowers consisting of a long floral tube and regular corolla redolent of the rose family...
Evolution of genome size and GC content in Droseraceae
Previous studies have suggested that carnivory and holokinetic chromosomes might be associated with genome downsizing in plants. Veleba et al. analysed genome evolution in sundews (Droseraceae), a widespread genus that...
