Genetius

The study uses laser‑ablation microscopy in the liverwort Marchantia to dissect the role of the first cell row and a contiguous stem‑cell quorum in apical notch meristem formation and regeneration, revealing intra‑ and inter‑notch communication that underlies auxin‑mediated apical dominance. Damage‑induced reorientation of notches demonstrates that stem cells act as a communicating population required for notch activity and meristem maintenance. A model integrating intra‑, inter‑ and extra‑notch signaling is proposed to guide future meristem research.

The study examined how elevation influences natural seed set, pollen limitation, and selfing capacity across seven zoogamous plant species in Afromontane grasslands on Mount Cameroon, finding a mid‑elevation peak in reproductive success that sharply declines toward the summit where pollination services and physiological constraints limit seed production. Despite partial self‑compatibility, high‑elevation populations did not shift toward increased selfing, indicating that both declining pollinator visitation and abiotic stress jointly restrict reproduction at the upper vegetation limit.

The authors present PIVOT, a single‑cell screening platform that combines viral superinfection exclusion and a surface phenotypic marker to enable pooled library delivery and isolation of individual plant cells. Using Nicotiana benthamiana as a heterologous host, they screened an Arabidopsis ORF library and identified known and novel regulators of cytokinin signaling, demonstrating the method’s potential for high‑throughput functional genetics across plants.

The study examined how genetic variation, parental life cycle, temperature, light, and gibberellic acid (GA) influence phenological plasticity in the facultative winter annual weed Erigeron canadensis. Seed vernalization and GA application promoted summer‑annual traits, supporting a GA‑mediated mechanism for cold‑induced life‑cycle shifts, while light had little effect and genetic variation accounted for less phenotypic variance than plastic responses. The findings highlight variability in GA‑mediated vernalization effects and call for further investigation.

The study used proximity-dependent labeling in transgenic barley to map host interactomes of five structurally related Blumeria hordei AVRA effectors, revealing that the conserved AVRA13 specifically binds the barley cell‑surface receptor SRF3 and disrupts its interaction with BAK1, reducing plasma‑membrane SRF3 levels. This manipulation impairs iron‑induced restriction of fungal growth, linking SRF3‑mediated iron homeostasis to pathogen virulence and immune recognition.

The authors integrate phenotypic plasticity theory with factor analytic mixed models to evaluate yield stability in cereals, defining adaptive plasticity as consistent superior performance across environments without trade‑offs. Using wheat and oat data, they demonstrate that adaptive plasticity aligns positively with factor analytic performance metrics, whereas maladaptive plasticity shows negative correlations, highlighting the need for biologically grounded statistical approaches in agronomy.

The study presents a phased diploid reference genome for the grape cultivar Pinot noir and integrates Nanopore sequencing of 23 clones to map clonal genetic and epigenetic variation in Vitis vinifera. While somatic SNPs and structural variants are rare and under purifying selection, CG methylation differences are abundant, gene‑body enriched, and reliably recapitulate clonal phylogenies, indicating mitotically inherited epialleles record propagation history.

The study evaluated foliar salicylic acid (SA) applications for alleviating drought stress in the high‑altitude medicinal plant Valeriana wallichii. SA treatments improved photosynthetic performance, water‑use efficiency, chlorophyll content, and root biomass under both severe (25% field capacity) and moderate (50% field capacity) drought conditions. These results suggest SA can enhance drought tolerance and productivity of this species.

The study investigates how systemic iron signaling integrates reductive iron uptake and coumarin‑mediated iron mobilization in Arabidopsis thaliana under iron‑sufficient, alkaline, and iron‑deficient conditions. Mutants lacking the OPT3 systemic signaling component (opt3‑2) maintain higher chlorophyll, persistent ferric chelate reductase activity, and enhanced coumarin secretion, whereas the coumarin‑deficient mutant (f6h1‑1) shows severe chlorosis with compensatory reductase induction; co‑cultivation shows opt3‑2‑derived coumarins can partially rescue f6h1‑1. These results identify systemic signaling as a key regulator of iron homeostasis.

The study generated Botrytis cinerea mutants expressing the salicylate hydroxylase NahG, which degrades salicylic acid, and found that these mutants grow better on SA and exhibit increased virulence on Arabidopsis thaliana and Phaseolus vulgaris. The enhanced pathogenicity depends on the host’s SA biosynthesis, as no effect is seen on SA‑deficient Arabidopsis sid2‑2, indicating that fungal SA degradation is a virulence strategy. Transcriptomic analysis shows that B. cinerea possesses four SH‑like genes with distinct expression during infection across hosts.