The fossil record suggests stomata-like pores were present on the surfaces of land plants over 400 million years ago. Whether stomata arose once or whether they arose independently across newly evolving land plant lineages has long been a matter of debate. In Arabidopsis, a genetic toolbox has been identified that tightly controls stomatal development and patterning. This includes the basic hel...

The leaves of quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) have a flattened petiole that allows them to quake (oscillate and roll) under low wind velocities. It was hypothesized that this adaptation might enable the plant to respond to windy conditions that would increase transpirational losses. No effects of wind with or without leaf quaking on stomatal resistance were observed under controlled ...

Hawaiian plants exposed to volcanic sulfur dioxide showed interspecific differences in leaf injury that are related to sulfur dioxide-induced changes in stomatal condutance. Species with leaves that did not close stomata developed either chlorosis or necrosis, whereas leaves of Metrosideros collina closed stomata and showed no visual symptoms of sulfur dioxide stress.

Plants have stomata, mouth-like pores on their surface, to adjust to environmental changes such as temperature and humidity to ensure optimum physiology and metabolism. A new study adds a key player, SERK, to the signal-sensing apparatus to inform where stomata are to be formed on the leaf.

This presentation reviews finite element shell analyses (linear and nonlinear, isotropic and anisotropic) of microscopic stomata modeled as doubly-elliptic toroidal shells. Stomata are the regulating valve in the seminal issue of water and carbon dioxide transport in plant biology. The finite element method allows more realistic modeling of complex geometries and material properties that are co...

Loss of function of the positive stomata development regulators SPCH or MUTE in Arabidopsis thaliana renders stomataless plants; spch-3 and mute-3 mutants are extreme dwarfs, but produce cotyledons and tiny leaves, providing a system to interrogate plant life in the absence of stomata. To this end, we compared their cotyledon transcriptomes with that of wild-type plants. K-means clustering of d...

Modern imaging technology provides new approaches to plant phenotyping for traits relevant to crop yield and resource efficiency. Our objective was to investigate water use strategies at early growth stages in durum wheat genetic resources using shoot imaging at the ScreenHouse phenotyping facility combined with physiological measurements. Twelve durum landraces from different pedoclimatic back...

AtMPB2C is the Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) homolog of MPB2C, a microtubule-associated host factor of tobacco mosaic virus movement protein that was been previously identified in Nicotiana tabacum. To analyze the endogenous function of AtMPB2C and its role in viral infections, transgenic Arabidopsis plant lines stably overexpressing green fluorescent protein (GFP)-AtMPB2C were established...

The process of hardening for drought resistance results in many changes in the vegetative organs of plants. PRINGSHEIM (7) has noted that pumpkin seedlings, grown under conditions of insufficient moisture, had an increased osmotic pressure in the cells and a higher resistance to drought than check plants grown in a moist soil and humid atmosphere. Since then a number of investigations have been...

That form of inflammation which attacks the apposed pleural surfaces lining the base of the lung and the diaphragm has been recognised from of old by physicians. M. Gueneau de Mussy* wrote a memoir on the subject about the year 1853, and he mentions that "the ancients considered delirium to be an urgent symptom of inflammation of the diaphragm, whence arose one of the terms applied to the struc...