Plants, Volume 2, Issue 4

We produced transgenic Arabidopsis plants that express chimeric genes for transcription factors converted to dominant repressors, using Chimeric REpressor gene-Silencing Technology (CRES-T), and evaluated the salt tolerance of each line. The seeds o...

The clubroot disease, caused by the obligate biotrophic protist Plasmodiophora brassicae, affects cruciferous crops worldwide. It is characterized by root swellings as symptoms, which are dependent on the alteration of auxin and cytokinin metabolism....

Plants have developed sophisticated recognition systems for different kinds of pathogens. Pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) can induce various defense mechanisms, e.g., the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) as an early event. P...

In the Serengeti ecosystem of East Africa, grazing ungulates prefer areas with elevated grass Na, suggesting that some grasses tolerate both high soil Na and defoliation. We performed a factorial Na-by-defoliation greenhouse study with five abundant...

Among several naturally occurring environmental factors, temperature is considered to play a predominant role in controlling proper growth and flowering in geophytes. Most of them require a “warm-cold-warm” sequence to complete their annual cycle. Th...

Growth and survival of young European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) is largely dependent on water availability. We quantified the influence of water stress (measured as Available Soil Water Storage Capacity or ASWSC) on vitality of young beech plants at...

Due to their sessile lifestyles, plants need to deal with the limitations and stresses imposed by the changing environment. Plants cope with these by a remarkable developmental flexibility, which is embedded in their strategy to survive. Plants can a...

Holoparasites are nonphotosynthetic plants that acquire all resources from hosts. The holoparasite Cuscuta gronovii is native to much of the US with a broad host range including Verbesina alternifolia, an understory perennial. Both species grow in mo...

Calcium (Ca²⁺) plays important roles in plant growth, development, and signal transduction. It is a vital nutrient for plant physical design, such as cell wall and membrane, and also serves as a counter-cation for biochemical, inorganic, and organic...

The vacuole is by far the largest intracellular Ca²⁺ store in most plant cells. Here, the current knowledge about the molecular mechanisms of vacuolar Ca²⁺ release and Ca²⁺ uptake is summarized, and how different vacuolar Ca²⁺ channels and Ca²⁺ pumps...

Calcium is an abundant element with a wide variety of important roles within cells. Calcium ions are inter- and intra-cellular messengers that are involved in numerous signalling pathways. Fluctuating compartment-specific calcium ion concentrations c...