Latest Research

The model plant Arabidopsis thaliana shows a striking natural variation in a key epigenetic marker. Researchers from the Nordborg group at the Gregor Mendel Institute (GMI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences sought to uncover what causes this variation. In a new study, the researchers…

Seed germination depends on light in many plants. But not always: Aethionema arabicum, a plant adapted to challenging environmental conditions, does it its own way. Here, the phytochromes, the receptors for red and far-red light, play an unexpected role in seed germination and time this…

Autophagy, or “self-eating”, is an essential cellular quality control mechanism that clears the cell of protein aggregates and damaged organelles. This mechanism is inactive under normal conditions and only triggered upon persistent cellular stress. Researchers from the Gregor Mendel…

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 instead grows vertically to reach the sunlight.…

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 the vacuole, where they are degraded. During…

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 uncovered. In a study published in eLife,…

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 and continued at the University of Bonn,…

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 Frédéric Berger are themselves following in…

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, the University of Edinburgh and the…

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 at GMI – Gregor Mendel Institute of…