the community site for and by developmental biologists
the community site for and by developmental biologists
Posted by Imtiyaz Ahmad Khanday on January 29th, 2019
The story behind our recent Nature paper ‘A male-expressed rice embryogenic trigger redirected for asexual propagation through seeds‘ For sexually reproducing organisms, the diploid life cycle starts with the fusion of a sperm cell with an egg cell. This process, known as fertilization, results in the formation of a zygote, the first diploid cell from[…]
Posted by the Node Interviews on January 16th, 2019
This interview, the 53rd in our series, was published in Development last year The ability to sense and respond to light is fundamental to plant development. As seedlings move from the soil to the air, a switch in developmental program occurs to promote light capture and autotrophic growth. A paper in Development now provides a molecular analysis of the[…]
Posted by the Node Interviews on July 18th, 2018
Asymmetric division is a widespread mechanism for generating cellular diversity during developmental patterning. The stomata of flowering plants are epidermal valves that regulate gas exchange, and provide an accessible system to investigate the mechanisms of asymmetric cell division both within and across species. A paper in the new issue of Development reports an investigation of the molecular control of this[…]
Posted by the Node Interviews on May 25th, 2018
Short CLE peptides regulate a wide variety of processes during plant development. In the developing root, the receptors and co-receptors for CLEs have remained largely unclear, as have the relationships between different CLEs and different (co-)receptors. A new paper in Development addresses this problem by reporting a new receptor kinase involved in CLE signaling. We caught[…]
Posted by the Node on January 23rd, 2018
In April, The Company of Biologists is hosting a workshop ‘Cellular gateways: expanding the role of endocytosis in plant development‘, organised by Jenny Rusinova, Takashi Ueda and Daniel van Damme. There are around 10 funded places available for early career scientists to attend the workshop, along with the 20 speakers. Deadline for applications = 16[…]
Posted by JiyanQI on January 10th, 2018
Before I started my PhD study, I didn’t notice that leaves have two sides: the adaxial side and the abaxial side. When my supervisor Dr. Yuling Jiao first asked me whether I would like to work on this leaf dorsiventral developmental process, I thought I should try, for my own curiosity. The leaf dorsiventral[…]
Posted by the Node Interviews on November 29th, 2017
Pavement cells in plant leaves were identified as a puzzle which deviated from normal cell shape rules by D’Arcy Thompson in his classic text On Growth and Form. Now modern approaches allow researchers to revisit these problems and try to uncover the rules that govern pavement cell topology during leaf development. This week we feature a[…]
Posted by Margaret on September 5th, 2017
Written By: Margaret Frank, Ora Hazak, Samuel Leiboff, Heike Lindner, Concepcion Manzano, Lena Mueller, Michael Raissig, Annis Richardson, Adam Runions, Sebastian Soyk A systems biology approach to understanding development The 2017 FASEB meeting “Mechanisms in Plant Development” launched with a keynote by Philip Benfey (Duke University, USA) about the current understanding of root development.[…]
Posted by dllewellyn on June 27th, 2016
Plant hairs or trichomes mean little to most people until they bite into a furry skinned peach or prick their finger on a rose bush thorn, but in the plant kingdom these versatile epidermal structures perform many essential functions that are attributable to their physical shape, location, density and sometimes chemical composition. Next time[…]
Posted by Cat Vicente on October 8th, 2014
There is something exciting about biologists joining forces with physicists and/or mathematicians, and finding a common language to solve biological problems that are just too complex to understand without stepping outside the realm of ‘traditional’ biology. At the recent EMBO conference on plant development, interdisciplinary studies were the main focus. And as the organiser of[…]
