The study investigates the subfunctionalization of duplicated GIGANTEA paralogs in Petunia x hybrida, focusing on PhGI2's role in floral transition. While RNAi silencing of PhGI2 caused mixed vegetative and reproductive phenotypes, CRISPR/Cas9-generated loss‑of‑function alleles showed that PhGI2 specifically promotes flowering without affecting vegetative growth or scent. The findings reveal that PhGI2 is essential for maintaining circadian gene expression dynamics and regulating flowering time, separating vegetative growth from reproductive timing.

The authors used a bottom‑up thermodynamic modelling framework to investigate how plants decode calcium signals, starting from Ca2+ binding to EF‑hand proteins and extending to higher‑order decoding modules. They identified six universal Ca2+-decoding modules that can explain variations in calcium sensitivity among kinases and provide a theoretical basis for interpreting calcium signal amplitude and frequency in plant cells.

The authors compiled and standardized published data on Rubisco dark inhibition for 157 flowering plant species, categorizing them into four inhibition levels and analyzing phylogenetic trends. Their meta‑analysis reveals a complex, uneven distribution of inhibition across taxa, suggesting underlying chloroplast microenvironment drivers and providing a new resource for future photosynthesis improvement efforts.

The study identified a major QTL (qDTH3) on chromosome 3 responsible for a 7‑10‑day earlier heading phenotype in the rice line SM93, using QTL‑seq, KASP genotyping, association mapping, and transcriptomic analysis to fine‑map the locus to a 2.53 Mb region and pinpoint candidate genes. SNP markers linked to these genes were proposed as tools for breeding early‑maturing, climate‑resilient rice varieties.