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 study demonstrates that ELF4 is essential for recruiting ELF3 into hypocotyl nuclei at dusk, a process that enhances ELF3’s ability to repress target gene expression and limit hypocotyl elongation, especially under short‑day conditions. Subnuclear localization patterns of ELF3 differ between hypocotyl and root tissues, indicating tissue‑specific temporal regulation by ELF4.

Prosopis cineraria plants were exposed to two heat stress regimes (45 °C and 55 °C) and subjected to transcriptome sequencing, revealing 1,151 and 1,562 differentially expressed genes respectively, with the higher temperature eliciting a stronger response. Bioinformatic analysis highlighted multiple gene families associated with thermotolerance, and the expression of selected heat‑responsive genes was confirmed by real‑time qPCR, providing candidate loci for crop improvement.