The ability to smell smoke is important if you’re expecting a fire – but some plants have altered how they use this sense to modify how they grow.
Continue reading Why would a plant that doesn’t live in a wildfire zone need to be able to smell smoke?
An investigation of interactions between the AON system and two hormones recently shown to promote nodulation, strigolactones and brassinosteroids.
Continue reading Strigolactones, brassinosteroids and autoregulation of nodulation
Increased root branching is recognized as a general feature of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) roots, but a full understanding of the mechanisms involved is still lacking. Fusconi reviews the subject and concludes that fungal exudates are probably the main compounds regulating AM root morphogenesis during the first colonization steps, while a complex network of interactions governs root development in established AMs. The possible involvements of phosphate, which generally increases in AM plants, and of variations in sugar transport and in hormone homeostasis, signalling and interactions are also discussed.
Continue reading Regulation of root morphogenesis in arbuscular mycorrhizae (Review)
Although >80% of species form arbuscular mycorrhizal symbioses, the roles of plant hormones in the associations are still being determined. Foo et al. critically review recent progress in our understanding of the roles of strigolactones, auxin, abscisic acid, ethylene, jasmonic acid and salicylic acid in mycorrhizal symbiosis, and present new evidence for a novel role for gibberellins in mycorrhizal development. Using gibberellin- and DELLA-deficient mutants of pea they show that bioactive gibberellins have a negative role in arbuscule formation. In contrast, a brassinosteriod-deficient pea mutant provides no indication of a role for these compounds in mycorrhizal development.
Continue reading Plant hormones in arbuscular mycorrhizal symbioses (Research in Context)Botany One is a blog run by the Annals of Botany Company, a non-profit educational charity.
In addition to Botany One, the company currently publishes three journals, the Annals of Botany, AoB PLANTS, and in silico Plants.
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