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 study examined how soil phosphorus and nitrogen availability influence wheat root-associated arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal (AMF) communities and the expression of mycorrhizal nutrient transporters. Field sampling across two years combined with controlled pot experiments showed that P and N jointly affect AMF colonisation, community composition (with Funneliformis dominance under high P), and regulation of phosphate, ammonium, and nitrate transporters. Integrating metabarcoding and RT‑qPCR provides a framework to assess AMF contributions to crop nutrition.

The study identifies the transcription factor MdBRC1 as a key inhibitor of bud growth during the ecodormancy phase in apple (Malus domestica), directly regulating dormancy‑associated genes and interacting with the flowering promoter MdFT2 to modulate bud break. Comparative transcriptomic analysis and gain‑of‑function experiments in poplar demonstrate that MdFT2 physically binds MdBRC1, attenuating its repressive activity and acting as a molecular switch for the transition to active growth.