In plants, thioredoxins h are encoded by a multigenic family of genes (eight in Arabidopsis thaliana, at least five in Populus sp.). The multiplicity of these isoforms raises the question of their specificity. This review focuses on thioredoxins h in two plant models: Arabidopsis and poplar. Thioredoxins h can be divided into three different subgroups according to the analysis of their primary ...

Plants utilize several families of photoreceptors to fine-tune growth and development over a large range of environmental conditions. The UV-A/blue light sensing phototropins mediate several light responses enabling optimization of photosynthetic yields. The initial event occurring upon photon capture is a conformational change of the photoreceptor that activates its protein kinase activity. Th...

Lysine is an essential amino acid for mammals but its concentration in cereals, one of our main food sources, is low. Research over the past 40 years has unraveled many biochemical and molecular details of the aspartic acid pathway, which is the main route of lysine biosynthesis in plants. However, genetic manipulation of this pathway has not been successful at producing high-lysine seeds. This...

Using freshly isolated maize mesophyll protoplasts and a transient expression method, I showed that the transcriptional activity of seven maize photosynthetic gene promoters is specifically and coordinately repressed by the photosynthetic end products sucrose and glucose and by the exogenous carbon source acetate. Analysis of deleted, mutated, and hybrid promoters showed that sugars and acetate...

The uptake and biotransformation of TNT was studied in cell suspension cultures and in whole plants of Datura innoxia and Lycopersicon peruvianum. In cell culture, TNT was rapidly removed from the growth medium and recovered from the cell extract in the form of a variety of biotransformation products resulting from nitroreduction, deamination, Nacetylation and side chain oxidation to aldehyde a...