Nitrogen (N) is an essential macronutrient that affects plant growth and development. N is an important component of chlorophyll, amino acids, nucleic acids, and secondary metabolites. Nitrate is one ...of the most abundant N sources in the soil. Because nitrate and other N nutrients are often limiting, plants have developed sophisticated mechanisms to ensure adequate supply of nutrients in a variable environment. Nitrate is absorbed in the root and mobilized to other organs by nitrate transporters. Nitrate sensing activates signaling pathways that impinge upon molecular, metabolic, physiological, and developmental responses locally and at the whole plant level. With the advent of genomics technologies and genetic tools, important advances in our understanding of nitrate and other N nutrient responses have been achieved in the past decade. Furthermore, techniques that take advantage of natural polymor- phisms present in divergent individuals from a single species have been essential in uncovering new components. However, there are still gaps in our understanding of how nitrate signaling affects biolog- ical processes in plants. Moreover, we still lack an integrated view of how all the regulatory factors iden- tified interact or crosstalk to orchestrate the myriad N responses plants typically exhibit. In this review, we provide an updated overview of mechanisms by which nitrate is sensed and transported throughout the plant. We discuss signaling components and how nitrate sensing crosstalks with hormonal pathways for developmental responses locally and globally in the plant. Understanding how nitrate impacts on plant metabolism, physiology, and growth and development in plants is key to improving crops for sustainable agriculture.
•Nitrate modulates hormonal pathways to adapt plant biology to environmental cues.•Hormones participate in local and systemic nitrogen signaling to regulate root and shoot growth.•Nitrate ...availability crosstalk with hormones to influence root system architecture.•This nitrate:hormone crosstalk also influences metabolism, uptake and stress responses.•Nitrate delays flowering time via the gibberellin signaling pathway.
Nitrate is an essential macronutrient for plants, a primary nitrogen source in natural and human-made ecosystems. Nitrate can also act as a signaling molecule that directs genome-wide gene expression changes with an impact on plant metabolism, physiology, growth and development. Nitrate and phytohormone signaling pathways crosstalk to modulate growth and developmental programs in a multifactorial manner. Nitrate-signaling controls plant growth and development using molecular mechanisms that involve phytohormone-signaling pathways. In contrast, many phytohormones modulate or impact nitrate signaling in interconnected pathways. In this review, we explore recent progress in our understanding of well-documented connections between nitrate and phytohormones such as auxin, cytokinin and abscisic acid. We also discuss recent studies connecting nitrate to other phytohormones such as ethylene, salicylic acid, gibberellins and brassinosteroids. While many molecular details remain to be elucidated, a number of core signaling components at the intersection between nitrate and the major hormonal pathways have been described. We focus on established interactions of nitrate and different hormonal pathways to bring about cellular, growth and developmental processes in Arabidopsis thaliana.
Nitrogen (N) is the mineral nutrient required in the greatest amount and its availability is a major factor limiting growth and development of plants. As sessile organisms, plants have evolved ...different strategies to adapt to changes in the availability and distribution of N in soils. These strategies include mechanisms that act at different levels of biological organization from the molecular to the ecosystem level. At the molecular level, plants can adjust their capacity to acquire different forms of N in a range of concentrations by modulating the expression and function of genes in different N uptake systems. Modulation of plant growth and development, most notably changes in the root system architecture, can also greatly impact plant N acquisition in the soil. At the organism and ecosystem levels, plants establish associations with diverse microorganisms to ensure adequate nutrition and N supply. These different adaptive mechanisms have been traditionally discussed separately in the literature. To understand plant N nutrition in the environment, an integrated view of all pathways contributing to plant N acquisition is required. Towards this goal, in this review the different mechanisms that plants utilize to maintain an adequate N supply are summarized and integrated.
•Local and systemic N signaling modulates a variety of developmental programs.•Nitrate breaks seed dormancy reducing abscisic acid levels.•Cross-talk between nitrate and cytokinin signaling ...influences meristem dynamics.•Local and systemic signaling controls shoot and root architecture.•Nitrate delays flowering time via the gibberellin signaling pathway.
Coordination between plant development and nutrient availability ensures a suitable supply of macromolecules for growth and developmental programs. Nitrate is an important source of nitrogen (N) that acts as a signal molecule to modulate gene expression, physiological, growth and developmental responses throughout the life of the plant. New key players in the nitrate signaling pathway have been described and knowledge of the molecular mechanics of how it impacts growth and developmental processes is increasing fast. Importantly, mechanisms for nitrate-control of growth and developmental processes have been proposed for both local as well as systemic responses. This article provides a synthesis of recent insights into molecular mechanisms by which nitrate impacts growth and development over Arabidopsis life-cycle.
Nitrogen (N) is an essential macronutrient for plants and a major limiting factor for plant growth and crop production. Nitrate is the main source of N available to plants in agricultural soils and ...in many natural environments. Sustaining agricultural productivity is of paramount importance in the current scenario of increasing world population, diversification of crop uses, and climate change. Plant productivity for major crops around the world, however, is still supported by excess application of N-rich fertilizers with detrimental economic and environmental impacts. Thus, understanding how plants regulate nitrate uptake and metabolism is key for developing new crops with enhanced N use efficiency and to cope with future world food demands. The study of plant responses to nitrate has gained considerable interest over the last 30 years. This review provides an overview of key findings in nitrate research, spanning biochemistry, molecular genetics, genomics, and systems biology. We discuss how we have reached our current view of nitrate transport, local and systemic nitrate sensing/signaling, and the regulatory networks underlying nitrate-controlled outputs in plants. We hope this summary will serve not only as a timeline and information repository but also as a baseline to define outstanding questions for future research.
Summary
Root hairs are specialized cells that are important for nutrient uptake. It is well established that nutrients such as phosphate have a great influence on root hair development in many plant ...species. Here we investigated the role of nitrate on root hair development at a physiological and molecular level. We showed that nitrate increases root hair density in Arabidopsis thaliana. We found that two different root hair defective mutants have significantly less nitrate than wild‐type plants, suggesting that in A. thaliana root hairs have an important role in the capacity to acquire nitrate. Nitrate reductase‐null mutants exhibited nitrate‐dependent root hair phenotypes comparable with wild‐type plants, indicating that nitrate is the signal that leads to increased formation of root hairs. We examined the role of two key regulators of root hair cell fate, CPC and WER, in response to nitrate treatments. Phenotypic analyses of these mutants showed that CPC is essential for nitrate‐induced responses of root hair development. Moreover, we showed that NRT1.1 and TGA1/TGA4 are required for pathways that induce root hair development by suppression of longitudinal elongation of trichoblast cells in response to nitrate treatments. Our results prompted a model where nitrate signaling via TGA1/TGA4 directly regulates the CPC root hair cell fate specification gene to increase formation of root hairs in A. thaliana.
Significance Statement
Root hairs are specialized cells important for nutrient uptake. It is well established that nutrients such as phosphate have great influence on root hair development in many plant species. In this study, we investigated the role of nitrate as a signal to control root hair development and identified regulatory factors in nitrate signaling pathway that are involved in this developmental response in Arabidopsis thaliana.
•Mathematical and computational models are used to predict cases of COVID-19 in Mexico.•The data is obtained through the Daily Technical Report issued by the Mexican Ministry of Health.•Gompertz, ...Logistic and Artificial Neural Network perform the modeling of the cases confirmed by COVID-19 with an R2>0.999.•Logistic, Gompertz and inverse Artificial Neural Network predicts the maximum number of new daily cases on May 8th, June 25th and May12th, 2020, respectively.•The Gompertz, Logistic and inverse Artificial Neural Network models predict different number of cases of COVID-19 at the end of the epidemic.
This work presents the modeling and prediction of cases of COVID-19 infection in Mexico through mathematical and computational models using only the confirmed cases provided by the daily technical report COVID-19 MEXICO until May 8th. The mathematical models: Gompertz and Logistic, as well as the computational model: Artificial Neural Network were applied to carry out the modeling of the number of cases of COVID-19 infection from February 27th to May 8th. The results show a good fit between the observed data and those obtained by the Gompertz, Logistic and Artificial Neural Networks models with an R2 of 0.9998, 0.9996, 0.9999, respectively. The same mathematical models and inverse Artificial Neural Network were applied to predict the number of cases of COVID-19 infection from May 9th to 16th in order to analyze tendencies and extrapolate the projection until the end of the epidemic. The Gompertz model predicts a total of 47,576 cases, the Logistic model a total of 42,131 cases, and the inverse artificial neural network model a total of 44,245 as of May 16th. Finally, to predict the total number of COVID-19 infected until the end of the epidemic, the Gompertz, Logistic and inverse Artificial Neural Network model were used, predicting 469,917, 59,470 and 70,714 cases, respectively.
Nitrogen (N)-based fertilizers increase agricultural productivity but have detrimental effects on the environment and human health. Research is generating improved understanding of the signaling ...components plants use to sense N and regulate metabolism, physiology, and growth and development. However, we still need to integrate these regulatory factors into signal transduction pathways and connect them to downstream response pathways. Systems biology approaches facilitate identification of new components and N-regulatory networks linked to other plant processes. A holistic view of plant N nutrition should open avenues to translate this knowledge into effective strategies to improve N-use efficiency and enhance crop production systems for more sustainable agricultural practices.
Prototyping hyperspectral imaging devices in current biomedical optics research requires taking into consideration various issues regarding optics, imaging, and instrumentation. In summary, an ideal ...imaging system should only be limited by exposure time, but there will be technological limitations (e.g., actuator delay and backlash, network delays, or embedded CPU speed) that should be considered, modeled, and optimized. This can be achieved by constructing a multiparametric model for the imaging system in question. The article describes a rotating-mirror scanning hyperspectral imaging device, its multiparametric model, as well as design and calibration protocols used to achieve its optimal performance. The main objective of the manuscript is to describe the device and review this imaging modality, while showcasing technical caveats, models and benchmarks, in an attempt to simplify and standardize specifications, as well as to incentivize prototyping similar future designs.
The Arroyo Seco 2 site contains a rich archaeological record, exceptional for South America, to explain the expansion of Homo sapiens into the Americas and their interaction with extinct Pleistocene ...mammals. The following paper provides a detailed overview of material remains found in the earliest cultural episodes at this multi-component site, dated between ca. 12,170 14C yrs B.P. (ca. 14,064 cal yrs B.P.) and 11,180 14C yrs B.P. (ca. 13,068 cal yrs B.P.). Evidence of early occupations includes the presence of lithic tools, a concentration of Pleistocene species remains, human-induced fractured animal bones, and a selection of skeletal parts of extinct fauna. The occurrence of hunter-gatherers in the Southern Cone at ca. 14,000 cal yrs B.P. is added to the growing list of American sites that indicate a human occupation earlier than the Clovis dispersal episode, but posterior to the onset of the deglaciation of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) in the North America.