The CRISPR/Cas system became a powerful genome editing tool for basic plant research and crop improvement. Thus far, CRISPR/Cas has been applied to many plants, including Arabidopsis, rice and other crop plants. It has been reported that CRISPR/Cas efficiency is generally high in many plants. In this study, we compared the genome editing efficiency of CRISPR/Cas in three different Arabidopsis a...

Adverse environmental conditions cause endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress in plants. To mitigate ER stress damage, ER associated transcription factors and inositol-requiring enzyme-1 (IRE1)-mediated bZIP60 mRNA splicing are activated in plants. A drought-induced gene, encoding the ortholog of AtbZIP60, was identified in the resurrection plant Boea hygrometrica, termed BhbZIP60. In response to ER...

WRKY transcription factors (TFs) are key regulators of many plant processes, including the responses to biotic and abiotic stresses, senescence, seed dormancy and seed germination. For over 15 years, limited evidence has been available suggesting that WRKY TFs may play roles in regulating plant responses to the phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA), notably some WRKY TFs are ABA-inducible repressors...

Plants possess remarkable ability to adapt to adverse environmental conditions. The adaptation process involves the removal of many molecules from organelles, especially membranes, and replacing them with new ones. The process is mediated by an intracellular vesicle-trafficking system regulated by phosphatidylinositol (PtdIns) kinases and phosphatases. Although PtdIns comprise a fraction of mem...

Chilling and freezing temperatures adversely affect the productivity and quality of crops. Hence improving the cold hardiness of crop plants is an important goal in agriculture, which demands a clear understanding of cold stress signal perception and transduction. Pharmacological and biochemical evidence shows that membrane rigidification followed by cytoskeleton rearrangement, Ca(2+) influx an...

Calcium acts as a universal second messenger in both developmental processes and responses to environmental stresses. Previous research has shown that a number of stimuli can induce [Ca2+] increases in both the cytoplasm and nucleus in plants. However, the relationship between cytosolic and nucleosolic calcium signaling remains obscure. Here, we generated transgenic plants containing a fusion p...

The lipoxygenase (LOX) pathway is a key regulator for lipid peroxidation, which is crucial for plant senescence and defense pathways. In this study, the transcriptional expression patterns of three persimmon (Diospyros kaki L. 'Fupingjianshi') 9-lipoxygenase genes (DkLOX1, DkLOX3, and DkLOX4) were investigated. DkLOX1 was specifically expressed in fruit, particularly in young fruit, and showed ...

Salinity is one of the major limitations for food production worldwide. Improvement of plant salt-stress tolerance using plant-growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) has arisen as a promising strategy to help overcome this limitation. However, the molecular and biochemical mechanisms controlling PGPR/plant interactions under salt-stress remain unclear. The main objective of this study was to obt...

Protecting crop yield under drought stress is a major challenge for modern agriculture. One biotechnological target for improving plant drought tolerance is the genetic manipulation of the stress response to the hormone abscisic acid (ABA). Previous genetic studies have implicated the involvement of the beta-subunit of Arabidopsis farnesyltransferase (ERA1) in the regulation of ABA sensing and ...

The role of inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (Ins[1,4,5]P3) in transducing the abscisic acid (ABA) signal during seed germination and in the stress responses of mature plants is poorly understood. We have considered the contributions of the phospholipase C1 (encoded by AtPLC1) and an Ins(1,4,5)P3 5-phosphatase (encoded by AtIP5PII) to ABA signaling by using a modified version of the glucocorticoid-...