The regulation of abscisic acid (ABA) biosynthesis is essential for plant responses to drought stress. In this study, we examined the tissue-specific localization of ABA biosynthetic enzymes in turgid and dehydrated Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) plants using specific antibodies against 9-cis-epoxycarotenoid dioxygenase 3 (AtNCED3), AtABA2, and Arabidopsis aldehyde oxidase 3 (AAO3). Immunoh...

Lignin is a major cell wall component of vascular plants that provides mechanical strength and hydrophobicity to vascular vessels. However, the presence of lignin limits the effective use of crop straw in many agroindustrial processes. Here, we generated transgenic maize plants in which the expression of a lignin biosynthetic gene encoding CCoAOMT, a key enzyme involved in the lignin biosynthes...

The morphology of plant fossils from the Rhynie chert has generated longstanding questions about vascular plant shoot and leaf evolution, for instance, which morphologies were ancestral within land plants, when did vascular plants first arise and did leaves have multiple evolutionary origins? Recent advances combining insights from molecular phylogeny, palaeobotany and evo-devo research address...

The haploid nuclear genome size (1C DNA) of vascular land plants varies over several orders of magnitude. Much of this observed diversity in genome size is due to the proliferation and deletion of transposable elements. To date, all vascular land plant lineages with extremely small nuclear genomes represent recently derived states, having ancestors with much larger genome sizes. The Selaginella...

ATHB-8, -9, -14, -15, and IFL1/REV are members of a small homeodomain-leucine zipper family whose genes are characterized by expression in the vascular tissue. ATHB-8, a gene positively regulated by auxin (Baima et al., 1995), is considered an early marker of the procambial cells and of the cambium during vascular regeneration after wounding. Here, we demonstrate that although the formation of ...

Basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) proteins are a class of transcription factors found throughout eukaryotic organisms. Classification of the complete sets of bHLH proteins in the sequenced genomes of Arabidopsis thaliana and Oryza sativa (rice) has defined the diversity of these proteins among flowering plants. However, the evolutionary relationships of different plant bHLH groups and the diversity...

In the current review, PubMed, Web Science, Science Direct, and Scopus were searched to investigate medicinal plants which contracted or relaxed respiratory, gastrointestinal, vascular uterine smooth muscles with emphasis on their mode of action.

The earliest land plants were short, herbaceous plants that evolved from primitive, water-living ancestors. For these plants, the change from a predominantly aquatic to a terrestrial environment was accompanied by the need for additional structural support to keep the plants upright and the need for more efficient transport of water to the aboveground parts of the plants. Larger plant sizes als...