There are several answers to this question. I expect all of you to say guard cells. Those of you who’ve read the previous item about chlorophagy might also be tempted to say plant vacuoles – presumably of guard cells...
Tag - tobacco
Nigel Chaffey
Over-expression of Trxo1 and cell viability under H2O2 stress
Ortiz-Espín et al. treat over-expressing PsTrxo1 tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) BY-2 cells with H2O2 and find a significant delay in cell death compared to controls, which may in part be due to a decreased content of...
botanyone
Life saving tobacco (with a mouse and virus assist)
Ebola virus currently has no licenced vaccine or cure, however several potential therapies are in development. Why does this merit mention on a blog about botany? For one good reason; scientists used plants in a bio...
Sarah Irons
Scientists find elixir of youth – giant plants ensue
Here’s a story that you should be hearing more about. It’s got monster-sized plants, eternal youth and a plant most people have heard of. The Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology...
Alun Salt
Potential new fertiliser
This month’s winner in the ‘so simple it’s positively brilliant (but why did nobody think of it before?)’ category is Damar López-Arredondo and Luis Herrera-Estrella’s paper entitled, ‘Engineering phosphorous [sic.]...
Lichens, thale cress, tobacco, the great survivors…
It is often said that cockroaches are one of the hardiest of animals, allegedly able to withstand a nuclear holocaust. Well, serious contenders amongst the plant-like critters are lichens, thale cress and tobacco...
Development of the midrib xylem during leaf expansion
The water-transport capacity of leaf venation is positively related to the leaf-lamina area, because the number and diameter of vein-xylem conduits are properly controlled to match the lamina area. Taneda and...
Nicotine: an ancient addiction?
It must be terribly depressing if you don’t have plants in your life to give you purpose and a reason to get up in the morning, put digit to keyboard, or whatever. Still, for those who are intellectually botanically...
Making plants work harder [or, Vorsprung durch Botanik]
Not content with just being grateful for all of the marvellous things that plants do and provide, we humans always seem to want them to do even more. Well, in that vein there has been a veritable avalanche of stories...
PHAN and compound leaf morphology
For both simple and compound leaves, a MYB domain transcription factor PHANTASTICA (PHAN) plays an important role in establishing the adaxial domain in the leaf. Zoulias et al. generate and analyse transgenic tomato...
Hybrid proline-rich proteins and cell elongation
The growth of plant cells is generally related to loosening of the cell wall, which allows cell expansion driven by osmotic water uptake. Dvorakova et al. demonstrate a correlation between over-expression of genes...
Factors leading to hybrid lethality in Nicotiana
Hybrid lethality is a type of postzygotic isolation and is observed in some species of Nicotiana in association with genes encoded on the Q chromosome. Tezuka et al. (pp. 267–276) make interspecific crosses of eight...
