Molecular Plant

Volatilomics is essential for understanding the biological functions and fragrance contributions of plant volatiles. However, the annotation coverage of current untargeted and widely-targeted methods has been limited by low sensitivity and/or low acquisition coverage. Here, we introduce WTV 2.0. It enables the construction of a high-coverage library containing 2111 plant volatiles; the development of a comprehensive-selective ion monitoring (cSIM) acquisition method that contains the fewest but sufficient ions for most plant volatiles, including the selection of characteristic qualitative ions with minimal ions number for each compound and the optimized segmentation of acquisition method; and finally, the automatic qualitative and semi-quantitative analysis of cSIM data...

Given the escalating impact of climate change on agriculture and food security, gaining insights into the evolutionary dynamics of climatic adaptation and uncovering climate-adapted variation empower the breeding of climate-resilience crops to face future climate change. Alfalfa (Medicago sativa subsp. sativa), the queen of forages with remarkable adaptability across diverse global environments, is an excellent model for investigating species' responses to climate change. We conducted population genomic analyses to unravel alfalfa's climatic adaptation and genetic susceptibility to future climate change, utilizing genome resequencing data from 702 accessions of 24 Medicago species...

The plant apoplast, which serves as the frontline battleground for long-term host-pathogen interactions, harbors a wealth of disease resistance resources. However, identification of these disease resistance proteins in the apoplast is relative lacking. In this study, we identified a rice secretory protein OsSSP1 (Oryza sativa secretory small protein 1). The OsSSP1 protein can be secreted into the plant apoplast, and both in vitro treatment and overexpression in rice can trigger plant immune response. The expression of OsSSP1 is suppressed significantly during Magnaporthe oryzae infection in susceptible rice TP309, and OsSSP1-overexpressing lines all show strong resistance to M...

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No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Enviromics refers to the characterization of micro- and macroenvironments based on large-scale environmental datasets. By providing genotypic recommendations with predictive extrapolation at a site-specific level, enviromics could inform plant breeding decisions across varying conditions and anticipate productivity in a changing climate. Enviromics-based integration of statistics, envirotyping (i.e., classifying environmental factors), and remote sensing could help unravel the complex interplay of genetics, environment, and management (G × E × M)...

During maize endosperm filling, sucrose not only serves as a source of carbon skeletons for storage-reserve synthesis, but also acts as a stimulus to promote this process. However, the molecular mechanism details about sucrose and endosperm filling are poorly understood. Here, we found that sucrose promoted the expression of endosperm-filling hub Opaque2 (O2), coordinating with storage-reserve accumulation. A protein kinase called SnRK1a1 attenuated O2-mediated transactivation, but sucrose released the suppression...

Macroalgae are multicellular, aquatic autotrophs that play vital roles in global climate maintenance and have diverse applications in biotechnology and eco-engineering, which are directly linked to their multicellularity phenotypes. However, their genomic diversity and the evolutionary mechanisms underlying multicellularity in these organisms remain uncharacterized. In this study, we sequenced 110 macroalgal genomes from diverse climates and phyla, and identified key genomic features that distinguish them from their microalgal relatives...

Beyond their function as structural barriers, plant cell walls are essential elements for the adaptation of plants to environmental conditions. Cell walls are dynamic structures whose composition and integrity can be altered in response to environmental challenges and developmental cues. These wall changes are perceived by plant sensors/receptors triggering adaptative responses during development and upon stress perception. Plant cell wall damage caused by pathogen infection, wounding or other stresses leads to the release of wall molecules, like carbohydrates (glycans), that function as Damage-Associated Molecular Patterns (DAMPs)...

The phytohormone auxin plays a pivotal role in governing plant growth and development. While the TRANSPORT INHIBITOR RESPONSE1/AUXIN SIGNALING F-BOX (TIR1/AFBs) receptors function in both the nucleus and cytoplasm, the mechanism governing the distribution of TIR1/AFBs between these small cellular compartments remains unknown. In this study, we demonstrate that auxin-mediated oxidation of TIR1/AFB2 is essential for their targeting to the nucleus. Our findings reveal that small active molecules, reactive oxygen species (ROS) and nitric oxide (NO), are indispensable for the nucleo-cytoplasmic distribution of TIR1/AFB2 in trichoblasts and root hairs...

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In plants and mammals, non-homologous end-joining is the dominant pathway to repair DNA double strand breaks, making it challenging to generate knock-in events. We identified two groups of exonucleases from the Herpes Virus and the bacteriophage T7 families that conferred an up to 38-fold increase in HDR frequencies when fused to Cas9/Cas12a in a Tobacco mosaic virus-based transient assay in Nicotiana benthamiana. We achieved precise and scar-free insertion of several kilobases of DNA both in transient and stable transformation systems...

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Increasing evidence supports the notion that pattern recognition receptor-mediated immunity goes beyond plasma membrane-to-nucleus signaling. With findings of pathways linking plasma membrane and chloroplasts and functions of stromules and perinuclear chloroplast clustering in plant defense, chloroplast immunity has emerged as a cornerstone of plant defense and a target of plant pathogens.

Understanding the underlying mechanisms and links between genome evolution and adaptive innovations stands as a key goal in evolutionary studies. Poplars, among the world's most widely distributed and cultivated trees, exhibit extensive phenotypic diversity and environmental adaptability. In this study, we present a genus-level super-pangenome comprising 19 Populus genomes, revealing the likely pivotal role of private genes in facilitating local environmental and climate adaptation. Through the integration of pangenomes with transcriptomes, methylomes, and chromatin accessibility mapping, we unveil that the evolutionary trajectories of pangenes and duplicated genes are closely linked to local genomic landscapes of regulatory and epigenetic architectures, notably CG methylation in gene-body regions...

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Hormone-activated proteolysis is a recurring theme of plant hormone signaling mechanisms. In strigolactone signaling, the enzyme-receptor DWARF14 (D14) and an F-box protein, MORE AXILLARY GROWTH2 (MAX2), mark SUPPRESSOR OF MAX2 1-LIKE (SMXL) family proteins SMXL6, SMXL7, and SMXL8 for rapid degradation. Removal of these transcriptional corepressors initiates downstream growth responses. The homologous proteins SMXL3, SMXL4, and SMXL5, however, are resistant to MAX2-mediated degradation. We discovered that the smxl4 smxl5 mutant has enhanced responses to strigolactone...