Structural Biology Content

How Plants Become Bushy, or Not

Andy Fell — August 06, 2024 - 3:50pm

For many plants, more branches means more fruit. But what causes a plant to grow branches? New research from the University of California, Davis shows how plants break down the hormone strigolactone, which suppresses branching, to become more “bushy.” Understanding how strigolactone is regulated could have big implications for many crop plants.

The study was published August 1 in Nature Communications.

First Complete Structures of Plant Respiratory Proteins

Andy Fell — January 03, 2023 - 2:05pm

Back-to-back papers in the Dec. 29 issue of Nature Plants report the first complete protein structures for plant respiratory supercomplex I+III2. Obtaining these structures helps researchers understand basic plant biology, as well as stress responses and how biofuel crops might grow more rapidly.

Plant Smoke Detectors Evolve as Hormone Sensors

Andy Fell — February 11, 2022 - 10:52am

Wildfires are devastating, but they can also bring new life by clearing existing vegetation and allowing new plants to spring up. Many plants in fire-prone areas actually require exposure to fire for seeds to germinate. In the past decade, scientists have discovered an ancient receptor protein that can detect molecules called karrikins in smoke from burnt plant material. The “smoke detector” protein, called KAI2, initiates molecular signals that speed up germination of seeds.

Study Finds Missing Link in the Evolutionary History of Carbon-Fixing Protein Rubisco

Andy Fell — August 31, 2020 - 10:49am

A team led by researchers at the University of California, Davis, has discovered a missing link in the evolution of photosynthesis and carbon fixation. Dating back more than 2.4 billion years, a newly discovered form of the plant enzyme rubisco could give new insight into plant evolution and breeding.

Rubisco is the most abundant enzyme on the planet. Present in plants, cyanobacteria (also known as blue-green algae) and other photosynthetic organisms, it’s central to the process of carbon fixation and is one of Earth’s oldest carbon-fixing enzymes.

New Cryo-Electron Microscope Powers Biological Sciences Discovery

Andy Fell — February 11, 2020 - 5:06pm

A new era in structural biology is coming to ΢��Ƶ, and it is already yielding discoveries.

It’s called cryoelectron microscopy, or cryo-EM, and it allows biologists to capture three-dimensional movies of biological molecules down to the scale of single atoms.