As sessile organisms, plants must cope with abiotic stress such as soil salinity, drought, and extreme temperatures. Core stress-signaling pathways involve protein kinases related to the yeast SNF1 ...and mammalian AMPK, suggesting that stress signaling in plants evolved from energy sensing. Stress signaling regulates proteins critical for ion and water transport and for metabolic and gene-expression reprogramming to bring about ionic and water homeostasis and cellular stability under stress conditions. Understanding stress signaling and responses will increase our ability to improve stress resistance in crops to achieve agricultural sustainability and food security for a growing world population.
Understanding the core set of pathways that allow plants to cope with abiotic stresses such as salinity, drought, and extreme temperatures can allow us to improve crop sustainability and food security for a growing world population.
DNA methylation is a conserved epigenetic modification that is important for gene regulation and genome stability. Aberrant patterns of DNA methylation can lead to plant developmental abnormalities. ...A specific DNA methylation state is an outcome of dynamic regulation by de novo methylation, maintenance of methylation and active demethylation, which are catalysed by various enzymes that are targeted by distinct regulatory pathways. In this Review, we discuss DNA methylation in plants, including methylating and demethylating enzymes and regulatory factors, and the coordination of methylation and demethylation activities by a so-called methylstat mechanism; the functions of DNA methylation in regulating transposon silencing, gene expression and chromosome interactions; the roles of DNA methylation in plant development; and the involvement of DNA methylation in plant responses to biotic and abiotic stress conditions.
Plants cannot move, so they must endure abiotic stresses such as drought, salinity and extreme temperatures. These stressors greatly limit the distribution of plants, alter their growth and ...development, and reduce crop productivity. Recent progress in our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying the responses of plants to abiotic stresses emphasizes their multilevel nature; multiple processes are involved, including sensing, signalling, transcription, transcript processing, translation and post-translational protein modifications. This improved knowledge can be used to boost crop productivity and agricultural sustainability through genetic, chemical and microbial approaches.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most frequent subtype of primary liver cancer and one of the leading causes of cancer-related death worldwide. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying HCC ...pathogenesis have not been fully understood. Emerging evidences have recently suggested the crucial role of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) in the tumorigenesis and progression of HCC. Various HCC-related lncRNAs have been shown to possess aberrant expression and participate in cancerous phenotypes (e.g. persistent proliferation, evading apoptosis, accelerated vessel formation and gain of invasive capability) through their binding with DNA, RNA or proteins, or encoding small peptides. Thus, a deeper understanding of lncRNA dysregulation would provide new insights into HCC pathogenesis and novel tools for the early diagnosis and treatment of HCC. In this review, we summarize the dysregulation of lncRNAs expression in HCC and their tumor suppressive or oncogenic roles during HCC tumorigenesis. Moreover, we discuss the diagnostic and therapeutic potentials of lncRNAs in HCC.
Summary
Base editing is a novel genome editing strategy that enables irreversible base conversion at target loci without the need for double stranded break induction or homology‐directed repair. ...Here, we developed new adenine and cytosine base editors with engineered SpCas9 and SaCas9 variants that substantially expand the targetable sites in the rice genome. These new base editors can edit endogenous genes in the rice genome with various efficiencies. Moreover, we show that adenine and cytosine base editing can be simultaneously executed in rice. The new base editors described here will be useful in rice functional genomics research and will advance precision molecular breeding in crops.
Defense against stress and active suppression of growth are two complementary strategies by which plants respond to adverse environments. Although beneficial for plant survival, active growth ...inhibition is often undesirable for crop productivity. Compared with the knowledge on how plants defend against stress-caused cellular impairment, much less is known about how stress signaling regulates plant growth and vice versa. Here, we review recent progress in this area and discuss recent studies suggesting that reciprocal regulation between stress-response and growth-control pathways occurs at multiple levels. Understanding this regulatory network will be critical for resetting the balance between stress resistance and growth in order to engineer stress-resistant and high-yielding crops.
Defense against stress and suppression of growth are complementary strategies by which plants respond to adverse environments. Although beneficial for plant survival, active growth inhibition is often undesirable for crop productivity. Zhang et al. review recent progress in this area and discuss the reciprocal regulation between stress-response and growth-control pathways.
We identify states favored by Coulomb interactions projected onto the Wannier basis of the four narrow bands of the "magic angle" twisted bilayer graphene. At the filling of 2 electrons/holes per ...moiré unit cell, such interactions favor an insulating SU(4) ferromagnet. The kinetic terms select the ground state in which the two valleys with opposite spins are equally mixed, with a vanishing magnetic moment per particle. We also find extended excited states, the gap to which decreases in the magnetic field. An insulating stripe ferromagnetic phase is favored at 1 electron/hole per unit cell.
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Stomata, the pores formed by a pair of guard cells, are the main gateways for water transpiration and photosynthetic CO2 exchange, as well as pathogen invasion in land plants. Guard cell movement is ...regulated by a combination of environmental factors, including water status, light, CO2 levels and pathogen attack, as well as endogenous signals, such as abscisic acid and apoplastic reactive oxygen species (ROS). Under abiotic and biotic stress conditions, extracellular ROS are mainly produced by plasma membrane‐localized NADPH oxidases, whereas intracellular ROS are produced in multiple organelles. These ROS form a sophisticated cellular signaling network, with the accumulation of apoplastic ROS an early hallmark of stomatal movement. Here, we review recent progress in understanding the molecular mechanisms of the ROS signaling network, primarily during drought stress and pathogen attack. We summarize the roles of apoplastic ROS in regulating stomatal movement, ABA and CO2 signaling, and immunity responses. Finally, we discuss ROS accumulation and communication between organelles and cells. This information provides a conceptual framework for understanding how ROS signaling is integrated with various signaling pathways during plant responses to abiotic and biotic stress stimuli.
Stomata are the main gateways for water transpiration and photosynthetic CO2 exchange, as well as pathogen invasion in land plants. Stomatal movement is regulated by a combination of environmental factors including water status, light, CO2 levels and pathogen attack, as well as abscisic acid and apoplastic reactive oxygen species (ROS).
We build symmetry-adapted maximally localized Wannier states and construct the low-energy tight-binding model for the four narrow bands of twisted bilayer graphene. We do so when the twist angle is ...commensurate near the “magic” value and the narrow bands are separated from the rest of the bands by energy gaps. On each layer and sublattice, every Wannier state has three peaks near the triangular moiré lattice sites. However, each Wannier state is localized and centered around a site of the honeycomb lattice that is dual to the triangular moiré lattice. The space group and the time-reversal symmetries are realized locally. The corresponding tight-binding model provides a starting point for studying the correlated many-body phases.
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Summary
In rice, amylose content (AC) is controlled by a single dominant Waxy gene. We used Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR‐associated 9 (Cas9) to introduce ...a loss‐of‐function mutation into the Waxy gene in two widely cultivated elite japonica varieties. Our results show that mutations in the Waxy gene reduce AC and convert the rice into glutinous ones without affecting other desirable agronomic traits, offering an effective and easy strategy to improve glutinosity in elite varieties. Importantly, we successfully removed the transgenes from the progeny. Our study provides an example of generating improved crops with potential for commercialization, by editing a gene of interest directly in elite crop varieties.
In this study, we reported generation of new glutinous rice with potential for commercialization by editing Waxy gene in elite crop varieties.
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