Molecular Plant最新文献

{"title":"On her cue: Papilla-derived jasmonic acid triggers rapid calcium signaling for pollen germination","authors":"Said Hafidh,Jan Tichy","doi":"10.1016/j.molp.2026.10.009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molp.2026.10.009","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19012,"journal":{"name":"Molecular Plant","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":27.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149225924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Wheat TaHGH1/HSFA2D integrates temperature and gravity signals to control starch granule biogenesis and auxin asymmetry for shaping shoot architecture plasticity","authors":"Yi Ding,Yufeng Yang,Ruiqiang Guo,Hao Zhang,Qi Zhang,Tengteng Zhang,Weilong Guo,Tao Jing,Caihua Li,Mingqi He,Huiqiang Wang,Junming Li,Shuzhi Zheng,Wenqiang Tang,Yue Cui,Xigang Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.molp.2026.10.007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molp.2026.10.007","url":null,"abstract":"Shoot architecture, mainly determined by tiller angle, is a key agronomic trait affecting crop yield. Winter wheat undergoes dynamic erect-prostrate growth transitions in response to low temperatures during overwintering, yet the coordinated regulation of shoot architecture by temperature and gravity remains elusive. In this study, we identified TaHGH1, an HSFA2 transcription factor, via GWAS and found it positively regulates shoot gravitropism and thereby reduces tiller angle. TaHGH1 promotes amyloplast abundance to enhance gravitropism; heat-induced transcription and cold-induced alternative splicing of TaHGH1 jointly modulate gravitropism and the erect-prostrate-erect growth shift. Mechanistically, TaHGH1 directly activates TaLAX3 and TaARF19, leading to asymmetric auxin distribution and differential cell elongation. Beneficial TaHGH1 haplotypes associated with compact architecture and increased spikelet number have undergone global artificial selection. Our work reveals a molecular module integrating thermal and gravity signals for adaptive shoot architecture, providing valuable targets for high-yield wheat breeding.","PeriodicalId":19012,"journal":{"name":"Molecular Plant","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":27.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149221461","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Plant genome evolution: From genomic variation to environmental adaptation","authors":"Liuyu Qin,Xin Yi,Runxian Yu,Andrew H. Paterson,Yuannian Jiao","doi":"10.1016/j.molp.2026.10.008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molp.2026.10.008","url":null,"abstract":"Adaptive evolution contributes to species diversification and reproductive success, which is a central focus of evolutionary biology. Elucidating the underlying mechanisms is crucial for understanding how plants respond to changing environments. Recent sequencing advances have generated vast plant genomic data, enabling evolutionary analyses at unprecedented phylogenetic depth and molecular resolution. Here, we survey the landscape of sequenced plant genomes, summarize recent advances in sequencing technologies and assembly methods, and synthesize how genomic variants are detected through micro- and macro-evolutionary analyses and how their fates are shaped by distinct modes of selection. We then highlight several major forms of genomic variation and their potential contributions to adaptive evolution, including structural variants, transposable element activity, and whole-genome duplications. We further survey the associated genomic signatures of extremophiles and plant terrestrialization as frameworks for understanding diverse and compound environmental stresses. Finally, we discuss emerging genomic research trends and future directions, which aim to deepen insights into the evolutionary architecture of plant genomes and provide a theoretical foundation for crop improvement, ecological conservation, and biotechnological applications.","PeriodicalId":19012,"journal":{"name":"Molecular Plant","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":27.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149218164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"SMXL neofunctionalization and small RNAs underlie the recent evolution of a plant sex-determining system in Sapindaceae","authors":"Jiakun Zheng,Yingxiao Mai,Weijian Sun,Zheng Qin,Chengjie Chen,Wanchun Wei,Chaoqiong Song,Xingxing Liu,Xingling Su,Fengqi Wu,Qiuping Wu,Baoxuan Yao,Yanwei Hao,Yuanlong Liu,Zaohai Zeng,Blake C. Meyers,Jing Xu,Deborah Charlesworth,Rui Xia","doi":"10.1016/j.molp.2026.10.005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molp.2026.10.005","url":null,"abstract":"Sexual systems in animals and plants are remarkably diverse. In plants, dioecy often evolved more recently than in well-studied animal systems, making plants especially important for understanding how separate sexes evolved independently from hermaphrodite ancestors. Although various dioecious plant systems have been studied, sex-determining genes have rarely been definitively identified. Here, to investigate flower sex determination in Sapindaceas, we sequenced the genome of Eurycorymbus cavaleriei, the only currently known dioecious species in this family and identified an XY sex-determining system. Integrating population and comparative genetics approaches, we demonstrated that SUN, an SMXL-family paralogue closely related to the Arabidopsis SMXL6/7 repressors of strigolactone signaling, has acquired a neofunctionalized role in flower sex determination in Sapindaceae. In this XY system, we identified a Y-linked non-coding allele, SUNMAO, as the sex-determining factor; it promotes maleness by producing small RNAs that silence the intact X-linked SUN allele. In females, SUN stabilizes the HD-ZIP transcription factor KUN; in turn, KUN activates SUN expression, forming a positive autoregulatory loop that represses anther development and promotes female flower formation. A similar SUN–KUN regulatory relationship is also observed in litchi, a monoecious Sapindaceae species. Notably, KUN is orthologous to the persimmon sex-determining regulator MeGI, a distantly related dioecious plant, highlighting the involvement of conserved genetic elements in the evolution of plant sexual systems. Together, our findings provide a mechanistic framework for understanding flower sex determination and the transition from monoecy to dioecy in Sapindaceae and opens new avenues for precise biotechnological control of flower sex across plants.","PeriodicalId":19012,"journal":{"name":"Molecular Plant","volume":"232 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":27.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149172378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Marked for protection: ac4C guides mRNAs into stress granules during heat stress","authors":"Itzell E. Hernández-Sánchez,Israel Maruri-López,Monika Chodasiewicz","doi":"10.1016/j.molp.2026.10.003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molp.2026.10.003","url":null,"abstract":"Rising global temperatures and increasingly frequent heat events pose a major threat to crop productivity and food security. Heat stress disrupts plant physiological and metabolic processes, compromising growth, development, and ultimately yield (Lesk et al. 2021). Understanding the molecular mechanisms that allow plants to withstand elevated temperatures is therefore increasingly important for improving crop resilience. Post-transcriptional regulation provides plants with a rapid means of reshaping gene expression during stress. RNA modifications can influence mRNA stability, translation, and localization, including partitioning into stress granules (SGs) - dynamic biomolecular condensates that rapidly assemble when cells experience adverse conditions (Arango et al. 2018; Kudrin et al. 2024; Kearly et al. 2024; Shen 2025). Recent work showed that N4-acetylcytidine (ac4C)-modified RNAs are preferentially enriched in SGs, raising the intriguing possibility that RNA modifications contribute to determining SG composition (Kudrin et al. 2024). Zhang et al. (Zhang et al. 2026) now provide a mechanistic and physiological framework for this idea in plants, connecting RNA acetylation, selective mRNA partitioning into SGs, transcript protection, and heat-stress tolerance","PeriodicalId":19012,"journal":{"name":"Molecular Plant","volume":"89 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":27.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149152664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The unexpected case of strigolactones in rice acclimation to drought","authors":"Francesca Cardinale","doi":"10.1016/j.molp.2026.10.004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molp.2026.10.004","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19012,"journal":{"name":"Molecular Plant","volume":"139 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":27.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149152663","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation of OsNHX2 encoding a tonoplast-localized transporter controls intracellular K+ accumulation to regulate cold tolerance in rice","authors":"Huimin Shi,Kuitian Shao,Zhihu Ding,Jian Feng,Zhiyuan Zhang,Huimin Cao,Wenyu Zhang,Xiuqin Zhao,Tianqing Zheng,Dapu Liu,Kai Chen,Wensheng Wang,Fan Zhang,Jianlong Xu","doi":"10.1016/j.molp.2026.10.002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molp.2026.10.002","url":null,"abstract":"Low-temperature stress significantly reduces rice yield and grain quality. Identifying major cold-tolerance genes and deciphering their regulatory networks is therefore essential for rice molecular breeding for cold tolerance. Here, through a genome-wide association study (GWAS) in a multi-parent advanced generation intercross (MAGIC) population, we identified OsNHX2, a tonoplast-localized K+ transporter that enhances cold tolerance at the seedling stage. OsNHX2 enhances cold tolerance by promoting an increase in potassium ion content in shoots, which stimulates proline accumulation and reduces the levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and malondialdehyde (MDA). Natural variation in the coding region of OsNHX2 underlies differences in K+ transport ability. We further demonstrated that OsNHX2 expression is negatively regulated by the transcription factor OsATH1. One natural variant in the OsNHX2 promoter, a 45-bp deletion, elevates OsNHX2 expression by reducing OsATH1 binding. Notably, we found that OsNHX2 physically interacts with OsGAPC3, a cytosolic glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase known to modulate responses to abiotic stresses via ROS signaling. This interaction masks the tonoplast-targeting signal of OsNHX2, altering its subcellular localization, impairing K+ transport, and promoting cytosolic K+ accumulation. Overexpression of OsNHX2 significantly increased the seed-setting rate under cold stress at the booting stage without compromising grain yield under normal conditions. Haplotype analysis revealed that rice accessions carrying the cold-tolerant OsNHX2 haplotype are predominantly distributed in higher-latitude regions, suggesting adaptive selection. Our findings demonstrate that OsNHX2, which is negatively regulated by OsATH1 and OsGAPC3 at both transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels, modulates intracellular K+ accumulation to control cold tolerance in rice.","PeriodicalId":19012,"journal":{"name":"Molecular Plant","volume":"198 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":27.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149150682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Kingdom-wide comparative transcriptomics reveals deeply conserved and predictable stress response programs across Viridiplantae","authors":"Eugene Koh,Li Hui Peh,Sabrina Tan,Teng-Seah Koh,Li-Li Chin,Boon-Chuan Ho,Marek Mutwil","doi":"10.1016/j.molp.2026.10.001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molp.2026.10.001","url":null,"abstract":"How conserved stress responses are across the plant kingdom remains poorly understood. Here, we present a kingdom-wide stress transcriptome atlas of 36 Viridiplantae species, from chlorophytes to angiosperms, across nine abiotic and biotic stresses. The atlas integrates reanalyzed public RNA-seq data with new in-house stress experiments on three species representing basal lineages, yielding 13.6 million differential expression calls from over 3,200 manually curated control-treatment comparisons. We find that ancient gene families respond broadly but moderately, while lineage-specific families respond narrowly but intensely, revealing a division of labor in stress gene deployment. Stress response conservation decays with phylogenetic distance yet remains detectable across more than 700 million years of divergence, with upregulated genes diverging faster than downregulated genes. Functional co-occurrence analysis uncovers a deeply conserved growth-defense tradeoff alongside stress-specific transcriptional rewiring. Conserved stress co-expression modules undergo regulatory sub-functionalization through duplication, with whole-genome duplicate pairs preferentially retained within modules. Finally, DNA and RNA foundation models predict stress responsiveness from sequence alone (auROC 0.755), suggesting a partially conserved cis-regulatory code underlying stress responses across the kingdom.","PeriodicalId":19012,"journal":{"name":"Molecular Plant","volume":"165 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":27.5,"publicationDate":"2026-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149123970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A CLV3-WUS positive feedback loop in individual cells enhances shoot stem cell thermotolerance in Arabidopsis.","authors":"Mengchu Xu, Haijun Wu, Cheng-Wu Liu, Zhong Zhao","doi":"10.1016/j.molp.2026.07.009","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.molp.2026.07.009","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>CLAVATA3 (CLV3) has long been thought to be a negative regulator of the WUSCHEL (WUS) expression domain, whereas cytokinin signaling increases WUS expression at the transcriptional level. Whether these two pathways in WUS regulation are coordinated in the stem cell niche remains unknown. Here, we show that CLV signaling has a dual-directional effect on WUS by limiting its expression domain but maintaining its expression level. CLV1 phosphorylates the transcription factor BRASSINAZOLE RESISTANT 1 (BZR1) to release the inhibitory effect of BZR1 on cytokinin biosynthesis, which relays the CLV signal to maintain WUS expression levels in individual cells. Under heat stress, decreased CLV signaling enhances the stability of BZR1 in the nucleus to repress cytokinin biosynthesis and WUS content, protecting stem cells from heat shock. Our results establish a positive feedback loop between CLV3 and WUS, which is mediated by multiple hormone interactions and required for maintaining shoot stem cell thermotolerance.</p>","PeriodicalId":19012,"journal":{"name":"Molecular Plant","volume":" ","pages":"1996-2009"},"PeriodicalIF":32.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148448156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Repurposing an E3 ligase to chaperone for the sake of thermotolerance.","authors":"Sotirios Fragkostefanakis, Ayat Bakery","doi":"10.1016/j.molp.2026.07.013","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.molp.2026.07.013","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19012,"journal":{"name":"Molecular Plant","volume":" ","pages":"1941-1943"},"PeriodicalIF":32.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148536351","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}