Non-vascular bryophytes live in colonies that cover the ground and resemble tiny forests. In a real forest, plants compete for light in different layers of the canopy. If a plant does not receive enough sunlight, it stops lateral branching and…

A “hub and spoke” system enables plant cells to efficiently coordinate cellular trafficking, particularly for cellular recycling, the so-called autophagy process. Specialized vesicles, the autophagosomes, engulf harmful molecules and carry them to…

In humans, and many other species, both genes inherited from the mother and from the father influence how embryos develop. In the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha, however, the mother has total control, as researchers from the Berger lab at GMI now…

The fungus Ustilago maydis attacks corn and can cause significant damage to its host. To do this, it first ensures that the plant offers little resistance to the infection. The surgical precision it applies is shown by a new study, initiated at GMI…

The journal The Plant Cell joins the celebrations of the 200th birthday anniversary of the “Father of genetics” with a series of reviews and perspective articles on plant genetics. The first two authors in this series, Ortrun Mittelsten Scheid and…

A plant fossil from a geological formation in Scotland sheds light on the development of the earliest known form of roots. A team led by researchers at GMI – the Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences,…

Mythological nymphs reincarnate as a group of corn smut proteins to launch a battle on maize immunity. One of these proteins appears to stand out among its sister Pleiades, much like its namesake character in Greek mythology. The research carried out…

The first plant embryo gene expression atlas at the single cell level was developed by a team of researchers at GMI – Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The work, published in the journal…

Gene-regulatory mechanisms at an early embryonic stage govern the flowering behavior of Arabidopsis later in development. The work of researchers at GMI – Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences – and…

An ingenious mechanism by which Arabidopsis safeguards the integrity of its genome is uncovered by researchers at GMI – Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The paper is published in the journal…