植物学技术

Embryogenesis of Arabidopsis thaliana follows a nearly invariant cell division pattern and provides an ideal system for studies of early plant development. However, experimental manipulation with embryogenesis is difficult, as the embryo develops deeply inside maternal tis ...

A key objective in the study of plant embryogenesis is to identify genes expressed in temporal and spatial patterns during development, in order to understand transcriptional control mechanisms regulating pattern formation, differentiation and morphogenesis. Mutagenic ap ...

Plant small RNAs are a class of 19- to 25-nucleotide (nt) RNA molecules that are essential for genome stability, development and differentiation, disease, cellular communication, signaling, and adaptive responses to biotic and abiotic stress. Small RNAs comprise two major RNA classes, s ...

Small RNAs are key molecules in RNA silencing pathways that exert sequence-specific regulation of gene expression and chromatin modifications in many eukaryotes. In plants, endogenous small RNAs, including microRNAs (miRNAs) and trans-acting small interfering RNAs (tasiRNA ...

Phytic acid, a cyclic compound (1,2,3,4,5,6-hexakis dihydrogen phosphate myoinositol) is a common storage form of phosphorus in seeds and is also considered as an antinutritional factor. Phytic acid, as a result of possessing negative charge at a wide range of pH values, has strong affi nity to bind ...

Lectins are proteins in nature with molecular weight ranging from 60,000 to 100,000 Da. Many lectins contain covalently bound sugar moieties and are glycoprotein in nature. These are also called phytohemagglutins because they agglutinate red blood cells.

Oxalate is a common constituent of many plant species. Some crop plants accumulate high levels of this dicarboxylic acid anion (oxalate). Depending on the species, oxalate accumulates primarily as soluble oxalate, insoluble calcium oxalate, or a combination of these two forms. Oxalate, b ...

Occasionally forages accumulate nitrates in quantities that are toxic to some farm animals. Under certain environmental conditions, some plants may accumulate high concentrations of nitrates. The factors that can influence the accumulation of nitrates in the plants are drought, s ...

L-mimosine is a nonprotein amino acid. Despite the consideration of Leucaena leucocephala as a promising alternate source of protein for fodder, the presence of mimosine to the extent of 2% to 10% dry matter in the leaf and 2% to 5% dry matter in the seed has limited its use as a livestock feed since mimosine and its ...

Canavanine occurs in over 350 species of the papilionoideae, a subfamily of the Leguminosae. It is an analogue of arginine (Fig. 1). The highest concentration of canavanine (13% dry weight) has been reported in Dioclea megacarpa and it occurs up to 5% in seeds of Canavalia ensiformis. L-canavanine ex ...

Light- and redox-controlled reversible phosphorylation of thylakoid proteins regulates short- and long-term acclimation of plants to environmental cues. The major phosphoproteins in thylakoids belong to photosystem II and its light-harvesting antenna but phosphorylat ...

Thioredoxins (Trx) are a ubiquitous family of proteins that modulate the enzymatic activity of their substrate proteins by redox regulation. This is achieved by reduction of a disulfide bond within their target proteins. A conserved pair of cysteine residues in Trx is required for catalys ...

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are involved in many signalling pathways and numerous stress responses in plants. Consequently, it is important to be able to identify and localize ROS in vivo to evaluate their roles in signalling. A number of probes that have a high affinity for specific ROS and that are ...

Continuous control of metabolism and development is a key feature of life and is of particular importance under stress conditions. While under normal conditions most cellular compartments maintain a reducing environment, the cellular redox state can be influenced by external facto ...

Calcium (Ca2+) ions act as intracellular second messengers in many different signalling processes in plant cells and thus contribute to the amplification step of the signalling pathway and the specificity of the adaptative response. Dynamics of calcium described as spatial and tempo ...

Within the last few years real-time quantitative PCR has become the method of choice for the accurate quantification of mRNA levels. Compared to previous methods the sensitivity of real-time quantitative PCR improved to the detection limit of up to one single molecule per reaction tube. Howe ...

The disruption or modulation of signal transduction pathways does not always lead to drastic changes in plant growth and development. Therefore, many loss- or gain-of-function lines do not exhibit an obvious phenotype under normal greenhouse conditions. To be able to assign biological f ...

Post-transcriptional control makes an important contribution to shaping transcript profiles of circadianly regulated genes. In Arabidopsis thaliana, the clock-regulated glycine-rich RNA-binding protein ATGRP7 oscillates with a 24-h rhythm and transmits the rhythmic ...

The orchestrated regulation of hundreds of genes responding in a temporal, spatial, and conditional expression is in part mediated by the transient binding of transcription factors to their specific DNA motifs. The analysis of these cis-regulatory DNA sequences is still a challenging t ...

Regulatory DNA sequences harbor the essential information to control specific gene expression changes and integrate information derived from upstream signaling cascades. This regulatory potential is mediated by direct binding of proteins, e.g., transcription factors, to de ...