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2003 [ 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 ]
All That Glistens Is Not Gold: RuBisCO as a Non-Photosynthetic Enzyme
When one thinks of ribulose phosphate carboxylase (RuBisCO) one instinctively recalls the Calvin pathway and carbon fixation. Indeed, where would photosynthesis be in cyanobacteria or chloroplasts without RuBisCO?
20 October 2003
Understanding Body Language: how some plants read a bacterial Nod
The fixation of nitrogen by symbiotic bacterial in leguminous plants is one of the basic biological processes that school children learn about in their science classes. Yet, it has taken a surprising amount of analyses to understand exactly how plants work their end of the arrangement and let the nitrogen-fixing bacteria into the plant cell.
20 October 2003
Liquid: The genomes and environments of Cyanobacteria
The principal photosynthetic organisms in the oceans are the cyanobacteria – a diverse group of autotrophic bacteria that are the ancestors of the chloroplasts in all eukaryotic phototrophs. On their own they constitute 20-40% of the marine chlorophyll biomass.
08 September 2003
A Bug in the System
Since the mid-1990’s it was apparent that viruses had the ability to redirect the behavior of the RNA-processing machinery in plants (Baulcombe ref 1). The propensity of engineered viruses to affect the expression of endogenous genes through a process that was subsequently called RNA-interference was linked to an older phenomenon termed co-suppression (for a review see Stevenson and Jarvis 2).
05 August 2003
Resources in Arabidopsis Biotechnology: T-DNA Integrations
This is a short review of a paper published as a technical advance in The Plant Journal in 2002 (1).
Throughout the 1990s there were several efforts to produce what Jonathon Jones, of the Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, had referred to as a gene machine. This was a high throughput transposon tagging system that would permit the rapid functional identification of the myriad new Arabidopsis genes that were then being sequenced (2).
05 August 2003
What Goes Around, Comes Around: mitochondria bite back
The theory of endosymbiosis was first proposed near the turn of the last century (1). Simply put, mitochondria and chloroplasts are derived from ancient bacteria that were consumed by the ancestral eukaryotic cell more than a billion years ago (1).
21 July 2003
Mobile Homes: how genes move from organelle to nucleus
Endosymbiosis is the process by which bacteria were consumed and then adopted by early eukaryote cells (1). Subsequent to consumption, DNA was transferred from the organellar genome to the nuclear genome leaving chloroplasts with ~100 protein coding genes from an original repertoire of over 4,000 and mitochondrial genomes as denuded as 13 protein coding genes in humans (2).
10 July 2003
The Editor Recommends... The Sweet Smell of Success
Over the past few years’ high-throughput, array technology has been brought to bear on many biological questions. However, none has been quite so appealing as the research published in October’s Plant Cell. Inna Guterman and co-workers present combinatorial EST and chemical analysis of scented and non-scented tetraploid rose stocks. They produced a ~2,100 unique EST library from rose petals and proceeded to analyse the expression patters of several candidate genes whose expression coincided with the production of perfume in the scented stock. The biochemical function of some of these candidates was analysed in an E. coli expression system. This work demonstrates the power of high-throughput screening and importantly illustrates how such technology can be applied to non-model biological systems. The Plant Cell, vol. 14, p2325-2348, (2002).
01 July 2003
The Editor Recommends ... Genetic Analysis of Choline Biochemistry
Choline, found as the phospholipid, phosphatidylcholine, is a vital component of cell membranes in most eukaryotes and comprises 40-60% of the total phospholipid content of non-plastid membranes in plants.
01 July 2003
The Editor Recommends ... Engineering Frost-Tolerance in Plants
Frost damage is a source of substantial agricultural losses in most temperate counties. A novel approach to ameliorating this problem is presented by Huang et al in October’s Plant Molecular Biology.
01 July 2003
The Editor Recommends ... The Evolution of Plant Cell CO2 Fixation Pathways
In maize, CO2 is fixed through the C4 pathway. Absorbed CO2 is delivered to RuBPCase via an abundant member of a family of proteins, the NADP-dependent malic enzymes.
01 July 2003
RNA Interference Takes Centre Stage
This year has seen remarkable developments in both the use and the understanding of RNA Interference (RNAi) in plant and other biological systems. In a series of papers published in Cell and Science in recent weeks, various researchers have identified the links between the mechanisms responsible for gene silencing, centromere function and genome rearrangements. Interestingly, RNA plays a key role.
01 July 2003
Resurrection Rice
Crop plants are not known for their love of cold, drought or saline environments. A notable exception to this rule are the “resurrection plants” which can be reduced to an apparent dry, lifeless state only to be revived upon the addition of some water. Ray Wu [1] has taken a leaf (or rather a sugar) out of the resurrection plant’s book and added it to rice thus conferring an uncanny ability to withstand the stresses that normally would lead to death.
01 July 2003
Stone Roses: in silico analysis of floral scent
Even in an area of biology with such potential glamour as floral development, it is rare to be given the chance to discuss something as subjective and emotive as floral scent. In what is probably the most interesting and novel use of high throughput genomics technology in recent years, Inna Guterman and co-workers have brought DNA chip technology and chemical analysis to bear on the genetic and biochemical basis of floral scent production in roses [1].
01 July 2003
The Editor Recommends ... Artificial Photosynthesis
All life depends on the ability of he organism to obtain energy from its environment. However, simply acquiring energy is insufficient for survival. If we exclude the viruses, virusoids and viroids that adopt purely parasitic lifestyles, all organisms store energy – usually in the form of organic polyphosphates.
01 July 2003
Ping-Pong: MITEy New Transposons from Rice
Infrequently, a journal will publish two papers back to back that attack the same subject. However, in a recent edition of the journal Nature, three papers were published simultaneously which all dealt with the same subject. Most remarkably of all, these papers dealt with plant transposable elements (1, 2, 3). The transposon mPING is the latest fallout from the rice genome sequencing initiative; and its discovery highlights the bioinformatic gold mine that genome sequencing provides, as well as bestowing a further tool for gene analysis in the globally important crop, rice.
01 July 2003
Share & Share Alike - or All Property is Theft: Lateral Gene Flow between Photosynthetic Prokaryotes
Until a few years ago, most people regarded the possibility of lateral gene flow between organisms as a scientific curiosity. Admittedly, this somewhat limited view seems rather unusual given the spread of antibiotic resistance genes between different bacterial species or the ability of genes to transfer between Agrobacteria and plants.
01 July 2003
A Humble Weed’s Complex Heritage
What could be humbler than a weed? Surely, the Arabidopsis plant with its 115 Mb genome could not be made any less simple. However, appearances are deceptive. The genetic material of Arabidopsis has been analysed in two recent studies [1,2] and has revealed a complex past with multiple rounds of duplication – and more distantly, the process by which genes moved from the endocytosed cyanobacterial ancestor of the chloroplast to the nucleus.
01 July 2003
Endosymbiosis & The Origin of Modern Algal Plastids
Recently, it was demonstrated that approximately 18% of the Arabidopsis genome consisted of sequences derived from the cyanobacterial ancestors of the chloroplast [1]. Now, in a similar study [2], the origin of plastids in the chromists (a term coined by Cavalier-Smith [3] to include the cryptophytes, haptophytes and the stramenopiles) has been deduced from analysis of cyanobacterial derived gene sets.
01 July 2003
Rice Genomics
Published last November in Nature [1,2], the sequence of chromosomes 1 and 4 of Oryza sativa represented the first detailed analysis of part of the genome of a major crop plant.
01 July 2003
Conference
Conference
