The study demonstrates that RNA extracted from herbarium specimens can be used to generate high‑quality transcriptomes, comparable to those from fresh or silica‑dried samples. By assembling and comparing transcriptomes across specimen types, the authors validated a plant immune receptor synthesized from a 1956 collection, proving archival RNA’s utility for functional genomics. These findings challenge the prevailing view that herbarium RNA is unsuitable for transcriptomic analyses.

The study demonstrates that abscisic acid (ABA) accumulates in darkness to suppress cotyledon opening during seedling deetiolation, and that light exposure lifts this repression, enabling cotyledon aperture. Genome‑wide transcriptional and alternative‑splicing changes accompany this process, and the light‑dependent regulation requires the splicing factors RS40 and RS41, whose activity is repressed in the dark.