Various herbicides inhibit photosynthesis by displacing the second electron acceptor QB from its binding site at the D 1 protein. Different amino acid substitutions within this binding site have been found to reduce herbicide affinities, thereby conferring herbicide resistance. In Synechocystis PCC 6714 we have selected 7 single mutants and 6 double mutants resistant to various herbicides due t...

18 Although fitness costs associated with plant defensive traits are widely expected, they are 19 not universally detected, calling into question their generality. Here we examine the 20 potential for life history trade-offs associated with herbicide resistance by examining seed 21 germination, root growth, and above-ground growth across 43 naturally occurring 22 populations of Ipomoea purpurea...

Monocotyledonous crop plants are usually more resistant to herbicides than grass weeds and most dicots. Their resistance to herbicides is mediated in many cases by P450 oxygenases. Monocots thus constitute an appealing source of P450 enzymes for manipulating herbicide resistance and recombinant forms of the major xenobiotic metabolizing mooxygenases are potential tools for the optimization of n...

With the increasing pressure on crop production from the evolution of herbicide resistance, farmers are increasingly adopting Integrated Weed Management (IWM) strategies to augment their weed control. These include measures to increase the competitiveness of the crop canopy such as increased sowing rate and the use of more competitive cultivars. While there are data on the relative impact of th...

In sequenced plant genomes, 15% or more of the identified genes are members of tandem-arrayed gene families. Because mutating only one gene in a duplicated pair often produces no measurable phenotype, this poses a particular challenge for functional analysis. To generate phenotypic knockouts, it is necessary to create deletions that affect multiple genes, select for rare meiotic recombination b...

Herbicides that mimic the natural auxin indole-3-acetic acid are widely used in weed control. One common auxin-like herbicide is dicamba, but despite its wide use, plant gene responses to dicamba have never been extensively studied. To further understand dicamba's mode of action, we utilized Arabidopsis auxin-insensitive mutants and compared their sensitivity to dicamba and the widely-studied a...