Seed germination is a critical step in the life cycle of flowering plants. Since seeds contain limited reserves, seed germination has to be tightly regulated to ensure that germination takes place in a suitable...
Tag - chloroplast
Alex Assiry
Rice chloroplasts become more spherical under salt stress
Though the cause isn’t clear, the chloroplasts may be reacting to carbon dioxide or light levels.
Erin Zimmerman
Recent range expansion in Australian hummock grasses
Large-scale environmental changes such as aridification have shaped and continue to influence the evolution and composition of biomes. As conditions change, organisms may persist in some parts of their ranges, become...
William Salter
Fusarium wilt of cucumber plants is not caused by water shortage
Although leaf wilt occurred in both water stress and FOC infection, the physiological responses were different, especially in leaf spatial distribution.
botanyone
The intricate intracellular structure of a rice mesophyll cell
Rice (Oryza sativa) leaf blades possess lobed mesophyll cells with intricate cell boundaries. Their sub-cellular structure has been observed with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) of thin sections, but the whole...
Nigel Chaffey
Iridoplasts, out of the shadows at last
Why can you find colourful plants, where they're hardest to see? Iridoplasts, an overlooked plastid, improve photosynthesis and look great while doing it.
A genome-wide association study of wild Miscanthus in the Russian Far East
Miscanthus is a genus of C4 perennial East Asian grasses that is emerging as a leading bioenergy crop. Clark et al. collected germplasm of M. sacchariflorus and M. sinensis in the Russian Far East, at the northern...
Do sequence repeats undermine plastid genome stability?
Although a few plant lineages have lost one copy of the plastid genome (plastome) inverted repeat (IR), its near ubiquity among streptophytes has fostered speculation about its functional role and consequent...
Chloroplasts: what are they for?
Taken at face value that is a pretty daft question. After all, it is well known that chloroplasts are for photosynthesis. True, but what about the chloroplasts in the guard cells (GCCs) of stomata? Chloroplasts in those...
The tannosome: a new chloroplast-derived organelle
Condensed tannins (proanthocyanidins) are widely distributed amongst the vascular plants (Tracheophyta). Brillouet et al. use a variety of techniques to examine tannin-rich samples from various organs across a wide...
![Image: Brillouet et al., 2013. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aob/mct168]](https://i0.wp.com/botany.one/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/01-Oct-SIZED-align-left.jpg?resize=585%2C300&ssl=1)
Tann-fastic, a new plant organelle(!!)
Jean-Marc Brillouet et al. have identified a new organelle in plant cells: the 'tannosome' is involved in the formation of condensed tannins.
Chloroplasts are how old???
It is widely acknowledged that eukaryotic cells (you know, the ones with a membrane-bound nucleus and a variety of other membrane-bound organelles (cf. prokaryotes)) came to be so complex by a series of ‘mergers and...
Relocation, relocation, relocation…
A study shows cold-induced organelle relocation in the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha, not only of chloroplasts, but nuclei and peroxisomes, too.
