Mohamed Abdulatif, Cairo University, Egypt Michael Avidan, Washington University School of Medicine, Saint Louis, MO, USA Christa Boer, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Arthur Bouwman, Catharina Hospital, Eindhoven, the Netherlands Girolamo Calo, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy Tim Cook, Royal United Hospital, Bath, UK Deborah J. Culley, Harvard Medical School, Bos...

Mutualists and pathogens, collectively called symbionts, are ubiquitous in plant communities. While some symbionts are highly host-specific, others associate with multiple hosts. The outcomes of mul-tispecies host-symbiont interactions with different degrees of speci-ficity are difficult to predict at this point due to a lack of a general conceptual framework. Complicating our predictive power ...

Rac-like GTPases or Rho-related GTPases from plants (RAC/ROPs) are important components of hormone signalling pathways in plants. Based on phylogeny, several groups can be distinguished, and the underlying premise is that members of different groups perform distinct functions in the plant. AtRAC7/ROP9 is phylogenetically unique among 11 Arabidopsis RAC/ROPs, and here it was shown that it functi...

Abscisic acid (ABA)¹ is a plant hormone that controls many aspects of plant growth, including seed germination, stomatal aperture size, and cellular drought response. ABA interacts with a unique family of 14 receptor proteins. This interaction leads to the activation of a family of protein kinases, SnRK2s, which in turn phosphorylate substrates involved in many cellular processes. The family of...

Dormancy is an adaptive mechanism that allows temperate deciduous plants to survive unfavorable winter conditions. In the present work, we investigated the possible function of abscisic acid (ABA) on the endodormancy process in pear. The ABA content increased during pear flower bud endodormancy establishment and decreased towards endodormancy release. In total, 39 putative genes related to ABA ...

Circadian clocks are a great evolutionary innovation and provide competitive advantage during the day/night cycle and under changing environmental conditions. The circadian clock mediates expression of a large proportion of genes in plants, achieving a harmonious relationship between energy metabolism, photosynthesis, and biotic and abiotic stress responses. Here it is shown that multiple paral...