Two decades after the discovery of systemin, the first plant peptide shown to be involved in cell to cell communication (Pearce et al., 1991), plant peptide research is coming of age, and is ready for cross-talk with older research fields in plant science. This issue of JXB illustrates that plant peptide signalling is of crucial importance for all aspects of plant growth and development. Plants...

Characteristics of late maturity in fruit are good agronomic traits for extending the harvest period and marketing time. However, underlying molecular basis of the late-maturing mechanism in fruit is largely unknown. In this study, RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) technology was used to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) related to late-maturing characteristics from a late-maturing mutant '...

A12-year-old brain possesses almost all of the neurons that it will ever have, but still has some maturing to do. Throughout the rest of adolescence and into adulthood, this organ will refine its white matter tracts. These bundles of axon fibers function as the wires in the circuits that connect the neurons in the brain’s many regions. Their carrying capacity and speed determine the degree of c...

A plethora of process modeling techniques has been proposed since Petri nets were introduced in 1962. One way of evaluating and comparing the scope and completeness of these techniques is by way of ontological analysis, a method which has gained popularity in the last decade. The purpose of this paper is to gauge the level of maturity of process modeling techniques over the last four decades of...