A genome-wide survey of the white jute (Corchorus capsularis) identified 34 laccase genes, with expression profiling indicating most are active in phloem and some are up‑regulated during development and under abiotic stress. Comparative analysis with Arabidopsis and reduced expression in a low‑lignin mutant highlighted CcaLAC28 and CcaLAC32 as key candidates for regulating fibre lignification, offering targets for breeding low‑lignin jute varieties.
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 used paired whole‑genome bisulphite sequencing and RNA‑seq on wheat landraces to investigate how DNA methylation patterns change during drought stress, revealing antagonistic trends across cytosine contexts and a key demethylation role for ROS1a family members. Gene‑body methylation correlated positively with expression but negatively with stress‑responsive changes, while drought‑induced hyper‑methylation of specific transposable elements, especially the RLX_famc9 LTR retrotransposon, appears to modulate downstream gene regulation via siRNA precursors.
The study examines how ectopic accumulation of methionine in Arabidopsis thaliana leaves, driven by a deregulated AtCGS transgene under a seed‑specific promoter, reshapes metabolism, gene expression, and DNA methylation. High‑methionine lines exhibit increased amino acids and sugars, activation of stress‑hormone pathways, and reduced expression of DNA methyltransferases, while low‑methionine lines show heightened non‑CG methylation without major transcriptional changes. Integrated transcriptomic and methylomic analyses reveal a feedback loop linking sulfur‑carbon metabolism, stress adaptation, and epigenetic regulation.
The study integrated 16 Arabidopsis thaliana whole‑genome bisulfite sequencing datasets from 13 stress experiments using a unified bioinformatic pipeline to map common and stress‑specific DNA methylation changes. Differentially methylated regions varied by stress type and methylation context, with CG DMRs enriched in gene bodies and CHG/CHH DMRs in transposable elements, some of which overlapped loci prone to stable epimutations. Gene ontology and TE enrichment analyses highlighted shared stress pathways and suggest environmental stress can generate heritable epigenetic variation.
High-quality PacBio HiFi draft genome assemblies were generated for three Bouteloua species (B. curtipendula, B. gracilis, B. eriopoda) with >98.5% BUSCO completeness. Gene prediction with Helixer produced inflated gene counts likely reflecting polyploidy and fragmented predictions, and panEDTA identified 25–40% transposable-element content dominated by LTR retrotransposons. These assemblies provide foundational references for comparative genomics within PACMAD grasses.
The study examined how tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) plants respond hormonally to infection by Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato DC3000 at two different temperatures, revealing temperature‑dependent expression of marker genes for salicylic acid, jasmonic acid, and abscisic acid pathways, while ethylene‑related genes remained unchanged. These results underscore the intricate interplay between host, pathogen, and environmental conditions in shaping plant defence.
The study adapted high‑throughput transposable‑element sequencing and introduced the deNOVOEnrich pipeline to map somatic TE insertions in Arabidopsis thaliana, uncovering ~200,000 new events across wild‑type and epigenetic mutant lines. Somatic integration is non‑random and TE‑specific, with families like ONSEN, EVADE, and AtCOPIA21 preferentially targeting chromosomal arms, genic regions, and chromatin marked by H2A.Z, H3K27me3, and H3K4me1, especially near environmentally‑responsive genes such as resistance loci and biosynthetic clusters.
The study compared tissue‑specific transcriptomes of the Australian pitcher plant Cephalotus follicularis with existing data from the Asian pitcher plant Nepenthes gracilis to assess molecular convergence underlying their similar leaf morphologies. Both species showed overlapping gene expression in functionally equivalent tissues and shared transcriptional activation of amino‑acid metabolism and protein synthesis after feeding, while exhibiting distinct regulation of digestive enzyme genes and several cases of combined expression and protein‑sequence convergence in glandular tissues.
The study investigated whether expression of Dormancy-Associated MADS-BOX genes DAM3 and DAM4 inversely correlates with vegetative growth during semi-dormancy induction and breaking in cultivated strawberry. DAM3 and DAM4 expression showed negative correlations with leaf area and petiole length, with DAM4 particularly reflecting growth during dormancy breaking, while no cultivar-specific chill requirement or leaf-type differences were detected. These findings support DAM3 and DAM4 as regulators of semi‑dormancy in Fragaria × ananassa.