Arabidopsis Research Round-up

These Arabidopsis Research Round-ups are usually posted on the main GARNet website (and still will be) but we’re also going to start posting them here. We were recently approached by the Arabidopsis Information Portal to ask if we could make the Round-ups available for their website too, and it’s easier for us to do that from the blog. Long story…but enjoy!

This week we have 10 new papers published from the end of July to the middle of August, including one by our very own Charis Cook!

Led by GARNet’s founder Ottoline Leyser from the University of Cambridge, this paper also involved UK plant science researchers from The Sainsbury Laboratory, Cambridge, the University of York and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Here the finding is presented that nitrate limitation results in increased auxin export from active buds, leading to reduced shoot branching and a characteristic shift in relative biomass allocation to the root.

Paul Dupree and Jennifer Mortimer from the University of Cambridge are listed as authors on this PNAS paper. In order to understand more about nucleotide sugar transporting (NST) proteins and their substrate-specific actions, this team have developed a novel approach to reconstitute NSTs into liposomes and subsequently analyse nucleotide sugar uptake  by mass spectrometry. Using this approach, and by synthesizing UDP-L-rhamnose in a newly developed two-step reaction, it has been possible to identify and characterize six bifunctional UDL-L-Rha/UDP-D-galactose transporters. This work is supported by evidence from loss-of-function and overexpression Arabidopsis lines.

Led by Professor Caroline Dean at the John Innes Centre, this paper in Current Biology unpicks the epigenetic mechanism behind the switching on and off of the FLCgene, which is responsible for the onset of vernalisation after a period of cold. It is found that the histone modification H3K36me3 causes the FLC gene to be active, while an alternate modification, H3K27me3, switches the gene off again. It is thought that accumulation of these opposing histone modifications allow the plant to register how long it has been exposed to cold, so that it knows when to start flowering.

You can read more about this research on our Latest News page here: How Plants Remember Winter, and Other Stories.

In a collaboration between the University of Birmingham and Durham University, this paper in The Plant Journal presents new information about meiosis in Arabidopsis. Specifically, the group looked at condensins – proteins involved in the organization of chromosomes during meiosis – and found distinct roles for condensin I and condensin II.

In this article, Craig Simpson and John Brown from the James Hutton Institute in Scotland worked with French colleagues to present the finding that nuclear speckle RNA-binding protein (NSR) and the alternative splicing competitor long noncoding RNA (ASCO-lncRNA) work together as a regulatory module to control alternative splicing patterns of transcription in Arabidopsis.  Furthermore, it is found that auxin induces a major change in the alternative splicing patterns of many genes, a response largely dependent on NSRs.

The Foyer Lab at the University of Leeds takes the helm on this new research paper investigating the effects of light and the composition of the regulatory B-subunit of protein phosphatase 2A on aphid fecundity and plant susceptibility to Pseudomonas syringae infection. Low light-grown Arabidopsis thaliana mutant lines were used, defective in phosphatase regulatory subunit B’γ (gamma; pp2a-b’γ), B’ζ (zeta; pp2a-b’ζ1-1 and pp2a-b’ζ 1-2) or gamma zeta double mutants (pp2a-b’γζ), in the presence or absence of a high light pre-treatment. Findings suggest that pre-exposure of plants to high light, and the composition of B-subunits are important in regulating plant resistance to aphids.

Researchers working on this paper, including those from the John Innes Centre and the University of Oxford, developed a new method for isolating growing and mature root hair cells to better analyse their transcriptomes my microarray analysis. By comparing the transcriptomes of these root hair cells with those of pollen tubes, the team found a statistical relationship between the datasets, suggesting a common transcriptional profile pattern for the apical growing cells in a plant. This study will underpin the further genetic and physiological dissection of the mechanisms underlying apical growth of plant cells.

Here’s a paper from GARNet’s very own communication and liaison officer, Charis Cook! The final paper to be published from her PhD in the Devoto lab at Royal Holloway, here Charis et al describe how pre-treating biomass with two types of white rot fungi can improve saccharification and thus increase the accessibility of cellulose in the cell wall. The work was done in tobacco and in Arabidopsis thaliana lines with reduced de-esterified homogalacturonan content.

Scientists from the Universities of Kent, Leeds and Imperial College London studied the effects of challenging Arabidopsis leaves with an hrp mutant strain ofPseudomonas syringae. It was found that, although they remained viable, hrp mutant bacteria were restricted in growth within 6 hours, and the plant accumulated for H2O2 and peroxidase around the mutant than in the wild type. The results suggest that the generation of H2O2 could be a likely target for effector proteins injected into plant cells by the wild-type bacteria.

Lisa Smith from the University of Sheffield worked with German colleagues on this Nucleic Acids Research paper. It is already known that the hnRNP-like glycine-rich RNA-binding protein AtGRP7 regulates pre-mRNA splicing in Arabidopsis, but here it is shown the AtGRP7 as has an effect on miRNA levels in the plant. Arabidopsis lines overexpressing AtGRP7 showed a significant reduction in the level of 30 different miRNAs, and an increase in a further 14; RNA immunoprecipitation also revealed that AtGRP7 interacts directly wit the pri-miRNAs in vivo.

Leave a Reply


 © 2025 - Weeding the Gems