Plants from the Allium genus are valued worldwide for culinary flavor and medicinal attributes. In this study, 16 cultigens of bunching onion (Allium fistulosum L.) were grown in a glasshouse under filtered UV radiation (control) or supplemental UV-B radiation [7.0  μ mol·m(-2) · s(-2) (2.68 W · m(-2))] to determine impacts on growth, physiological parameters, and nutritional quality. Supplemen...

Because of their sessile life style, plants have evolved the ability to adjust to environmentally harsh conditions. An important aspect of stress adaptation involves the reprogramming of the cell cycle to ensure optimal growth. The atypical E2F transcription factor DP-E2F-like 1 (E2Fe/DEL1) had been found previously to be an important regulator of the endocycle onset. Here, a novel role for E2F...

Although Siberian Trap volcanism is considered a primary driver of the largest extinction in Earth history, the end-Permian crisis, the relationship between these events remains unclear. However, malformations in fossilized gymnosperm pollen from the extinction interval suggest biological stress coinciding with pulsed forest decline. These grains are hypothesized to have been caused by enhanced...

A pea (Pisum sativum) DNA fragment (termed MB3) was isolated by differential display of cDNAs obtained from total leaf RNA of ultraviolet B (UV-B) radiation-treated plants. Longer cDNAs were cloned by rapid amplification of cDNA ends in the 3' to 5' direction. Three different, but very similar, cDNAs were cloned, sadA, sadB, and sadC, the major difference between them being a 36-bp deletion in ...

The light environment is a key factor that governs a multitude of developmental processes during the entire life cycle of plants. An important and increasing part of the incident sunlight encompasses a segment of the UV-B region (280-320 nm) that is not entirely absorbed by the ozone layer in the stratosphere of the earth. This portion of the solar radiation, which inevitably reaches the sessil...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small, non-coding RNAs that play critical roles in post-transcriptional gene regulation. In plants, mature miRNAs pair with complementary sites on mRNAs and subsequently lead to cleavage and degradation of the mRNAs. Many miRNAs target mRNAs that encode transcription factors; therefore, they regulate the expression of many downstream genes. In this study, we carry out a s...

A comparative study in Malva sylvestris L. plants was carried out for change in growth pattern and their anthocyanin production with various induced stress. Exogenous administration of 0.1mM concentration of abscisic acid, silver nitrate as foliar spray for five successive days and supplemental thirty minutes exposure dose of UV-B for continuous three days to the plants significantly induced va...

In plants, environmental perturbations often result in oxidative reactions in the apoplastic space, which are counteracted for by enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidative systems, including ascorbate and glutathione. However, the occurrence of the latter and its exact role in the extracellular space are not well documented. In Arabidopsis thaliana, the gamma-glutamyl transferase isoform GGT1 b...

Horseradish peroxidase (HRP), a highly investigated member of the peroxidase family, has been known − among many other biological activities − to catalyze the oxidation of flavonoids and phenolic substrates overall, quercetin among them. On the other hand, quercetin is very well known for its expressed antioxidant activities, which in the case of UV external radiation can be expressed partly in...