by Cynthia Alsayyah, Manish K. Singh, Maria Angeles Morcillo-Parra, Laetitia Cavellini, Nadav Shai, Christine Schmitt, Maya Schuldiner, Einat Zalckvar, Adeline Mallet, Naïma Belgareh-Touzé, Christophe Zimmer, Mickaël M. Cohen Mitofusins are large GTPases that trigger fusion of mitochondrial outer membranes. Similarly to the human mitofusin Mfn2,...

by Maggie R. Wagner Host genotype affects microbiome composition in many plants, but the mechanisms and implications of this phenomenon are understudied. New work in PLOS Biology illustrates how host genotype leads to differential gene expression and fitness in bacteria of the barley rhizosphere.

by Melissa D. Parker, Elise S. Brunk, Adam J. Getzler, Katrin Karbstein The 18S rRNA sequence is highly conserved, particularly at its 3′-end, which is formed by the endonuclease Nob1. How Nob1 identifies its target sequence is not known, and in vitro experiments have shown Nob1 to be error-prone. Moreover, the sequence around the 3′-end is degenerate...

by Xiaobao Ying, Sayanta Bera, Jinyuan Liu, Roberto Toscano-Morales, Chanyong Jang, Stephen Yang, Jovia Ho, Anne E. Simon The signature feature of all plant viruses is the encoding of movement proteins (MPs) that supports the movement of the viral genome into adjacent cells and through the vascular system. The recent discovery of umbravirus-like...

by Jason Z. Chen, Zeeyong Kwong, Nicole M. Gerardo, Nic M. Vega Specialized host–microbe symbioses canonically show greater diversity than expected from simple models, both at the population level and within individual hosts. To understand how this heterogeneity arises, we utilize the squash bug, Anasa tristis, and its bacterial symbionts in the...

by Alba Pacheco-Moreno, Anita Bollmann-Giolai, Govind Chandra, Paul Brett, Jack Davies, Owen Thornton, Philip Poole, Vinoy Ramachandran, James K. M. Brown, Paul Nicholson, Chris Ridout, Sarah DeVos, Jacob G. Malone Plant-associated microbes play vital roles in promoting plant growth and health, with plants secreting root exudates into the rhizosphere...