Cysteine supply is crucial for ABA biosynthesis in plants. Here, the authors report that chloroplast cysteine synthase complex regulates stomatal closure by integrating different stress signals via dynamically supplying cysteine for ABA biosynthesis.

Abstract. The aleurone in cereal grains is an outer cell layer enriched with multiple nutrients important for human health. Enhancing the thickness of the

Abstract. Reducing arsenic levels in paddy rice is an important agricultural issue. Rice alcohol dehydrogenase 2 (ADH2) deficiency results in reduced arsen

Abstract. Plants are vulnerable to photodamage when exposed to light intensities that exceed their photosynthetic capacity. To protect themselves, they act

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

Cyanophycin is a biopolymer of arginine and aspartate, and it is found in various prokaryotes. Two key enzymes of cyanophycin metabolism are cyanophycin synthase (CphA) producing cyanophycin, and cyan...

The model of C3 photosynthesis of Farquhar et al. (1980) integrated knowledge of the functioning of the biochemical components of photosynthetic carbon assimilation in C3 plants. The model linked equations describing activated Rubisco kinetics with those on the stoichiometry of the photosynthetic carbon reduction cycle and the photorespiratory carbon oxidation cycle, particularly on their energetic (electron transport, ATP synthesis and NADPH) requirements. It included temperature dependencies of these processes and combined them with a semi-empirical equation for the dependence of potential electron transport rate on absorbed irradiance. The model aimed to match generalized observations of photosynthetic gas exchange of leaves with predictions from this mathematical summary of photosynthesis. In this model, we introduced the hypothesis that the rate of Rubisco carboxylation could not exceed the capacity for RuP2 regeneration or the enzymatic capacity to consume RuP2, and that the system behaved as a teeter-totter (see-saw) with a sharp transition from one limiting state to the other. We suggested that to model genotypic and phenotypic variations amongst leaves most parameters could be assigned a priori and only the maximum Rubisco activity (Vcmax) and the maximal electron transport rate, Jmax, needed to be varied. This simplicity of use led to the wider spread application and success of the model.

In plants, oxidosqualene cyclases (OSCs) perform a highly complex single reaction to generate the basis of all triterpenoid diversity. Here the authors leverage genome mining and transient expression to uncover multiple evolutionary and mechanistic insights for OSCs across the plant kingdom.

High expression of the cytochrome P450 CYP81D11 leads to high tolerance to abiotic stresses by increasing photosynthetic capacity and preventing accumulati

Climate change has profound impacts on plant growth, productivity, and immunity. Photosynthesis, a key biological process that sequesters atmospheric …

Summary: In Arabidopsis, a redox-regulated plastoglobule ABC1K1–ABC1K3 kinase complex responds to red light-induced plastoquinone (PQ) pool reduction. Activated thylakoid oxidoreductase LTO1 oxidizes ...

Abstract. Light is a central environmental signal that coordinates plant development, metabolism, and stress responses. By integrating external cues with i

Iridoids are terpenoid metabolites found in thousands of plants. Using single-cell transcriptomics, the authors discovered an unexpected enzyme that has been neofunctionalized to catalyse the cyclization required to form the iridoid scaffold.

The importance of the peroxisome as a site of oxidative metabolism in plants is well recognised, but the consequences of peroxisomal biochemistry for the broader metabolic network of plant cells are s...

Cellular homeostasis is maintained by the balance between energy production and breakdown and is fundamental to all forms of life. The conserved, ancient target of rapamycin (TOR) kinase is a central ...

The escalating global climate crisis urgently demands biomanufacturing technologies with higher carbon efficiency. Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco), the central enzyme catalyzing carbon dioxide fixation in the Calvin–Benson cycle, exhibits low efficiency, thereby limiting its industrial application. This review summarizes fundamental Rubisco research, laying the foundation for its efficiency-enhancing engineering and biomanufacturing applications. We first outline the discovery, systematic classification, and molecular evolution of Rubisco, and then elucidate the structural dynamics underlying its activation and inhibition mechanisms. Subsequently, we provide the first systematic synthesis of five enzyme-efficiency enhancement strategies, spanning classical directed evolution to artificial intelligence-driven rational design. Recent advances in the utilization of Rubisco by autotrophic and heterotrophic microorganisms for the synthesis of biobased products are also critically examined. The resulting cross-scale design framework integrates evolutionary biology, structural dynamics, and synthetic biology, offering an extensible paradigm for sustainable, carbon-neutral biomanufacturing.

Phylogenetic analyses of glutamine synthetase (GS) in seed plants revealed that all three major evolutionary lineages (GS2, GS1a, and GS1b) must have been present in the common ancestor, with GS2 bei....

Oxygenic photosynthesis in cyanobacteria, algae, and plants typically relies on visible light, but some lineages can utilize far-red light (FRL, wavel…

Plants in natural habitats frequently encounter fluctuating light (FL), which can lead to photoinhibition of Photosystem I (PSI), thereby limiting photosynthetic productivity. The cytochrome (Cyt) b6...

How did the last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA) population evolve? Recent evidence shows an Asgard archaeon-like organism acquiring a bacterium, the future mitochondrion, going from symbiosis to e...

RNA editing at specific mitochondrial transcript sites in Arabidopsis thaliana is crucial for Complex I assembly and stability, with deficiencies leading t