Gene required for root hair growth, nitrate foraging found in grasses

Scientists have found a plant gene that drives the growth of root hairs, the tiny structures that help plants find water and nutrients in the soil.

Phys.org

From climate resiliency to variation affecting growth rate:

David Des Marais from MIT at #JGI2023:

Control of Growth Rate Variation in Brachypodium

#plant #Genome #variation #brachypodium

@LBNLBioSci

Over the moon to share
@danzhanghappy
et al’s paper now published in @eLife “Opposite polarity programs regulate asymmetric subsidiary cell divisions in grasses” - we identified a novel, distal #polarity domain formed by the POLAR homolog in #Brachypodium. Together with a proximal polarity domain formed by PAN1, POLAR acts like a compass to define the orientation of the formative #CellDivision that makes stomatal helper cells in #grasses. https://elifesciences.org/articles/79913
Opposite polarity programs regulate asymmetric subsidiary cell divisions in grasses

The formation of stomatal 'helper cells' (=subsidiary cells) in grasses requires two opposing polarity domains with diverse roles in establishing division asymmetry.

eLife
Something that I use very extensively in my own work are the #orthogroups that have been released as a resource together with this paper - they provide groups of roughly orthologous genes, linking the Sang annotation to #arabidopsis, #wheat, #barley, #rye, #maize, #brachypodium and #rice, as well as to oat progenitors.