Grain filling in sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) mainly depends on actual photosynthesis, being the contribution of stored reserves in stems (sucrose, hexoses, and starch) rather low. Drought periods during grain filling often reduce yield. Increasing the capacity of stem to store reserves could help to increase grain filling and yield stability in dry years. Fructans improve water uptake in s...

Epigenetic modifications of chromatin structure are essential for many biological processes, including growth and reproduction. Patterns of DNA and histone modifications have recently been widely studied in many plant species, although there is virtually no data on the spatial and temporal distribution of epigenetic markers during plant development. Accordingly, we have used immunostaining tech...

The medicinal herb, Smilax bracteata C. Presl. is a monocotyledon species in the family of Smilacaceae. There are about 261 species and 240 infraspecific species (IPNI, 2015) which are distributed in tropical and subtropical regions, with some herbaceous species extending their range into the temperate regions of North America, Europe and Asia. The greatest diversity is found in eastern Asia. I...

MOTIVATION Ancestral genomes provide a better way to understand the structural evolution of genomes than the simple comparison of extant genomes. Most ancestral genome reconstruction methods rely on universal markers, that is, homologous families of DNA segments present in exactly one exemplar in every considered species. Complex histories of genes or other markers, undergoing duplications and ...

Optimal growth of euhalophytes requires moderate concentrations of salt and, in dicotyledons, is associated with succulence and accumulation of Na(+) in plant tissues. However, reports of salt-stimulated growth in monocotyledons are rare. Relative growth rate (RGR), biomass accumulation, and water content were studied in Sporobolus virginicus (Poaceae), a C(4) chloridoid grass, grown hydroponic...

MOTIVATION The accurate discovery and annotation of regulatory elements remains a challenging problem. The growing number of sequenced genomes creates new opportunities for comparative approaches to motif discovery. Putative binding sites are then considered to be functional if they are conserved in orthologous promoter sequences of multiple related species. Existing methods for comparative mot...

Lily (Lilium spp), which belongs to Lilium, is one kind of monocotyledon. As a perennial ornamental plant with extremely high esthetic, edible, and medicinal value, lily has gained much favor due to its mostly showy flowers of various colors and elegant shape. In this research, we studied experimental materials in a sample of 49 individuals including 40 cultivars, nine species of wild lily, and...

The stomatal apparatus consists of a pair of guard cells and regulates gas exchange between the leaf and atmosphere. In guard cells, blue light (BL) activates H(+)-ATPase in the plasma membrane through the phosphorylation of its penultimate threonine, mediating stomatal opening. Although this regulation is thought to be widely adopted among kidney-shaped guard cells in dicots, the molecular bas...

A homology search of wheat chloroplast (ct) and mitochondrial (mt) genomes identified 54 ctDNA segments that have homology with 66 mtDNA segments. The mtDNA segments were classified according to their origin: orthologs (prokaryotic origin), xenologs (interorganellar DNA transfer origin) and paralogs (intraorganellar DNA amplification origin). The 66 mtDNA sequences with homology to ctDNA segmen...

Trichoderma reesei colonizes predecayed wood in nature and metabolizes cellulose and hemicellulose from the plant biomass. The respective enzymes are industrially produced for application in the biofuel and biorefinery industry. However, these enzymes are also induced in the presence of lactose (1,4-0-ß-d-galactopyranosyl-d-glucose), a waste product from cheese manufacture or whey processing in...