More than a century after two introduced pathogens killed billions of American chestnut trees, introgression of resistance alleles from Chinese chestnuts has contributed to the recovery of self-sustai...

Many plant pathogenic fungi penetrate host surfaces mechanically, using turgor pressure generated by specialized infection cells called appressoria. These appressoria develop semipermeable cell walls ...

Polyamines are often associated with ribosomes and are thought to stabilize their integrity. In Arabidopsis, the polyamine thermospermine (tSpm) affects xylem cell fate. tSpm induces translation of SU...

Editors’ selections from the current scientific literature

Biological function is fundamentally determined by nucleic acid and protein sequence. Beyond encoding genetic information, nucleic acids also display complex physicochemical parameters that shape stru...

Terrestrial vascular plants operate under negative water potential, which results in hydraulic tension in the vascular system. Vascular tension varies with transpiration and soil drying and is regulat...

Plants display a wide range of life spans and aging rates. Although dynamic changes to DNA methylation are a hallmark of aging in mammals, it is unclear whether similar molecular signatures reflect ra...

Inflorescences of flowering plants adopt diverse genetically programmed and environmentally tuned architectures. By contrast, continued maintenance of the stem-cell pool within the apical meristem is ...

Prezygotic interspecific incompatibility prevents hybridization between species, which limits interbreeding strategies for crop improvement using wild relatives. The Brassica rapa female self-incompat...

Small seed “parachutes” may be causing inbreeding

The specific partnership between legumes and rhizobia relies on a chemical dialogue. Plant flavonoids activate the bacterial transcription factor NodD, which triggers production of Nod factors that ar...

Editors’ selections from the current scientific literature

Anthropogenic selection of grain traits such as dormancy has shaped the developmental trajectories of crops. In cereals, shortening dormancy provides rapid and even postharvest germination, but increa...

The NOSTER Science Microbiome Prize has been established to reward innovative research by young investigators working on the functional attributes of the microbiota of any organism that has potential ...

Clean energy infrastructure is being deployed with unmatched scale and speed—and China is leading the way

Sex determination underpins genesis of male and female flowers with particularly important implications in plant breeding. Auxin and ethylene regulate femaleness in cucurbits. Here, we identified an a...

Color and scent are well-known pollinator cues. Some plants also produce heat, but its role remains unclear. Here, we report that plant-generated thermal infrared radiation serves as a pollination sig...

The discovery of chlorophyll f–containing photosystems, with their long-wavelength photochemistry, represented a distinct, low-energy paradigm for oxygenic photosynthesis. Structural studies on chloro...

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The plant cell wall regulates development through spatiotemporal modulation of its chemical and mechanical properties. Pectin methylesterification is recognized as a rheological switch controlling wal...

Pre-zygotic interspecific incompatibility prevents hybridization between species limiting interbreeding strategies for crop improvement using wild relatives. The Brassica rapa female self-incompatibil...

The genome of Arabidopsis thaliana consists of 10 chromosomes. By inducing CRISPR-Cas–mediated breaks at subcentromeric and subtelomeric sequences, we fused entire chromosome arms, obtaining two eight...

Anthropogenic selection of grain traits such as dormancy has shaped the developmental trajectories of crops. In cereals, shortening dormancy provides rapid and even post-harvest germination, but incre...

Editors’ selections from the current scientific literature

Brassinosteroids are essential plant hormones that play a central role in regulating growth, development, and stress responses. Their impact on plant architecture and productivity makes them attractiv...

The BioInnovation Institute & Science Prize for Innovation seeks to recognize bold researchers who are asking fundamental questions at the intersection of the life sciences and entrepreneurship. We se...

Editors’ selections from the current scientific literature

Salicylic acid (SA) is a key phytohormone that orchestrates immune responses against pathogens, including Pseudomonas syringae bacteria. The timing and extent of SA accumulation are tightly controlled...

Directed evolution can rapidly generate genetic variants with new and enhanced properties, yet efficient platforms for performing such evolution directly in plant cells have been lacking. We developed...

Plant roots release exudates to encourage microbiome assembly, which influences the function and stress resilience of plants. How specific exudates drive spatial colonization patterns remains largely ...

DNA methylation loss at transposable elements (TEs) can affect neighboring genes and be epigenetically inherited in plants, yet the determinants and significance of this additional system of inheritan...

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Carbon fixation through the Calvin-Benson-Bassham (CBB) cycle accounts for the majority of carbon dioxide (CO2) uptake from the atmosphere. The CBB cycle generates C3 carbohydrates but is inefficient ...

Editors’ selections from the current scientific literature

High planting density boosts crop yields but also heightens pest and pathogen risks. How plants adapt their defenses under these conditions remains unclear. In this study, we reveal that maize enhance...

Editors’ selections from the current scientific literature

Rapid evolution through small shifts in allele frequencies at thousands of loci is a long-standing neo-Darwinian prediction but is hard to characterize in the wild. European ash tree (Fraxinus excelsi...

Editors’ selections from the current scientific literature

Reactive oxygen species function as key signals in plant adaptation to environmental stresses like drought. Roots respond to transient water unavailability by temporarily ceasing branching through the...

Adzuki is a central legume in East Asian culinary culture, yet its domestication origin remains debated. Using ~700 accessions across Asia, we show that the initial domestication happened three to fiv...