Mary Williams Review: Domestication and Breeding of Jatropha curcas L. Jatropha curcas L. is a drought-tolerant perennial angiosperm in the in the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae. As such, it has a high untapped potential to meet the food and bioenergy demands of the world. Montes and Melchinger review the current status of the progress in Jatropha domestication and … Read more
Recently, we’ve been profiling first authors of Plant Cell papers that are selected for In Brief summaries. Here are the first-author profiles from the November issue of The Plant Cell. Jaewook Kim, Kijong Song, and Eunae Park, featured authors of Epidermal Phytochrome B Inhibits Hypocotyl Negative Gravitropism Non-Cell Autonomously Jaewook Kim Current Position: Graduate student, … Read more
November of this year marked the 50th anniversary of the official release of IR8, the “miracle rice” that changed the world. The rice, developed at IRRI (International Rice Research Institute) greatly increased yields compared to other varieties of the time, and is thought to have saved the lives millions of people who would otherwise have … Read more
Featured Review: Programmed Cell Death in Development and Disease Programmed cell death (PCD) is an active process that occurs as part of normal development and also contributes to defense against pathogens. While there are many similarities in developmental PCD (dPCD) and pathogen-triggered PCD (pPCD), there are also differences. Huysmans et al. review and contrast these … Read more
Featured Review: The Broad Footprint of Climate Change From Genes to Biomes to People ($) In this review, Scheffers et al. collate a vast amount of data to summarize the impact of climate change on terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems; their findings are sobering. A key conclusion is that across the 94 processes analyzed, 84% … Read more