research about plant cell

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Plant cell biology articles from across Nature Portfolio

Plant cell biology is the study of all aspects of plant cells. It is particularly concerned with structure, growth, division, signalling, differentiation and death of plant cells.

Lignin strips in glandular trichomes

Compartmentalization of specialized compounds in glandular trichomes is essential for plant protection against stresses and attraction of pollinators. This compartmentalization is achieved by the establishment of a lignin-based apoplastic barrier named ‘neck strip’, which is present in trichomes of diverse plant species.

• Igor Cesarino
• Dyoni M. Oliveira

Related Subjects

• Chloroplasts
• Circadian rhythms in plants
• Plant cell cycle
• Plant cell death
• Plant cytoskeleton
• Plant polarity
• Plant transporters
• Protein trafficking in plants
• Proteolysis in plants

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Arabidopsis α-Aurora kinase plays a role in cytokinesis through regulating MAP65-3 association with microtubules at phragmoplast midzone

Arabidopsis α-Aurora kinase regulates plant cytokinesis by phosphorylating the microtubule-associated protein MAP65-3, which controls the dynamic organization of the phragmoplast structure essential for cytokinesis completion.

• Xingguang Deng
• Honghui Lin

Functional implication of the homotrimeric multidomain vacuolar sorting receptor 1 (VSR1) from Arabidopsis thaliana

• HaJeung Park
• BuHyun Youn
• ChulHee Kang

Identification of triacylglycerol remodeling mechanism to synthesize unusual fatty acid containing oils

Triacylglycerol remodeling in Physaria fendleri changes the seed oil fatty acid composition after initial synthesis to overcome metabolic bottlenecks in the accumulation of valuable unusual fatty acids. This process enhances designer oil engineering.

• Prasad Parchuri
• Sajina Bhandari
• Philip D. Bates

RinRK1 enhances NF receptors accumulation in nanodomain-like structures at root-hair tip

RinRK1 interacts with NFR1 and NFR5 through their extracellular domains, facilitating a complex with Flot1. This interaction promotes their localization at root hair tip nanodomains, crucial for mediating the rhizobial infection.

The complete Chloroplast genome of Stachys geobombycis and comparative analysis with related Stachys species

• Zhijun Deng

The thylakoid proton antiporter KEA3 regulates photosynthesis in response to the chloroplast energy status

Thylakoid K + /H + exchange by KEA3 optimizes photosynthesis during light fluctuations. Here, the authors show that a combination of stromal pH, ATP, ADP and NADP + , NADPH induces structural re-arrangements required for KEA3 regulation in vivo.

• Michał Uflewski
• Tobias Rindfleisch
• Ute Armbruster

News and Comment

Interacting with both sides

• Guillaume Tena

On the edge — how plant cells monitor growth

Cell edges are part of a coordinate system used by the cell to direct three-dimensional growth in an organized manner. They emerge as signalling hubs with unique composition, capable of sensing mechanical stresses derived from neighbouring cells, to negotiate and harmonize individual cellular growth rates, therefore avoiding mechanical conflict.

• Choy Kriechbaum
• Sabine Müller

Neck strip: an apoplastic structure at glandular trichome

Glandular trichomes on plant leaves and stems synthesize and store specialized compounds. We identified a novel lignin-based structure (which we named the neck strip) required for storage of compounds in cucumber glandular trichomes and demonstrated the mechanism of specialized compound accumulation in glandular trichomes.

Order and disorder in clathrin-mediated endocytosis

The generation of clathrin-coated vesicles during endocytosis requires the co-ordinated recruitment of dozens of proteins to the plasma membrane. We discovered that the plant TPLATE (or TSET) complex (TPC) undergoes biomolecular condensation through interactions with plasma membrane phospholipids and, via weak multivalent interactions, recruits clathrin and other endocytic proteins to facilitate the efficient progression of endocytosis.

Integrity peptide for tube walls

• Raphael Trösch

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Plant biotechnology research with single-cell transcriptome: recent advancements and prospects

• Published: 21 February 2024
• Volume 43 , article number  75 , ( 2024 )

Cite this article

• Muhammad Ali 1 , 2   na1 ,
• Tianxia Yang 1 , 3   na1 ,
• Hai He 1 &
• Yu Zhang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6547-6243 1  

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Key message

Single-cell transcriptomic techniques have emerged as powerful tools in plant biology, offering high-resolution insights into gene expression at the individual cell level. This review highlights the rapid expansion of single-cell technologies in plants, their potential in understanding plant development, and their role in advancing plant biotechnology research.

Single-cell techniques have emerged as powerful tools to enhance our understanding of biological systems, providing high-resolution transcriptomic analysis at the single-cell level. In plant biology, the adoption of single-cell transcriptomics has seen rapid expansion of available technologies and applications. This review article focuses on the latest advancements in the field of single-cell transcriptomic in plants and discusses the potential role of these approaches in plant development and expediting plant biotechnology research in the near future. Furthermore, inherent challenges and limitations of single-cell technology are critically examined to overcome them and enhance our knowledge and understanding.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32070250) and the open research project of “Cross-Cooperative Team” of the Germplasm Bank of Wild Species, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Funding was provided by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 32070250).

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Muhammad Ali and Tianxia Yang contribute equally to this work.

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School of Agriculture, Sun Yat-Sen University, Shenzhen, 518107, China

Muhammad Ali, Tianxia Yang, Hai He & Yu Zhang

Peking University-Institute of Advanced Agricultural Sciences, Weifang, China

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State Key Laboratory of Maize Bio-breeding, National Maize Improvement Center, Frontiers Science Center for Molecular Design Breeding (MOE), China Agricultural University, Beijing, China

Tianxia Yang

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Ali, M., Yang, T., He, H. et al. Plant biotechnology research with single-cell transcriptome: recent advancements and prospects. Plant Cell Rep 43 , 75 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-024-03168-0

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

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Air Quality and Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions

Tradescantia response to air and soil pollution, stamen hair cells dataset and ANN colour classification Provisionally Accepted

• 1 Federal University of Paraná, Brazil
• 2 Department of Environmental Engineering, Federal University of Paraná, Brazil
• 3 Institute of Forestry and Rural Engineering, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Estonia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Tradescantia plant is a complex system that is sensible to environmental factors like water supply, pH, temperature, light, radiation, impurities and nutrient availability. It can be used as a biomonitor for environmental changes, however the bioassays are time consuming and have a strong human interference factor that might change the result depending on who is performing the analysis. We have developed computer vision models to study colour variations from Tradescantia clone 4430 plant stamen hair cells, which can change be stressed due to air pollution and soil contamination. The study introduces a novel dataset, Trad-204, comprising single-cell images from Tradescantia clone 4430, captured during the Tradescantia stamen-hair mutation bioassay (Trad-SHM). The dataset contain images from two experiments, one focusing on air pollution by particulate matter and another based on soil contaminated by diesel oil. Both experiments were carried out in Curitiba, Brazil, between 2020/2023. The images represent single cells with different shapes, sizes, and colours, reflecting the plant’s responses to environmental stressors. An automatic classification task was developed to distinguishing between blue and pink cells, and the study explores both a baseline model and three artificial neural network (ANN) architectures: TinyVGG, VGG-16, and ResNet34. Tradescantia revealed sensibility to both air particulate matter concentration and diesel oil in soil. The results indicate that Residual Network architecture outperforms the other models in terms of accuracy on both training and testing sets. The dataset and findings contribute to the understanding of plant cell responses to environmental stress and provide valuable resources for further research in automated image analysis of plant cells. The comparison between ANN architectures aligns with previous research, emphasizing the superior performance of ResNet models in image classification tasks. Artificial intelligence identification of pink cells improves the counting accuracy, thus avoiding human errors due to different colour perceptions, in addition speeding up the analysis process. Overall, the study offers insights into plant cell dynamics and provides a foundation for future investigations, as well as biomonitoring being an important tool for political discussions, being a relevant issue in risk assessment and thedevelopment of new public policies relating to the environment.

Keywords: Resnet, VGG, Air, Soil, Water Pollution, Biomonitor

Received: 08 Feb 2024; Accepted: 30 Apr 2024.

Copyright: © 2024 Rodrigues, Goeldner, Ferreira Mercuri and Noe. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Mx. Leatrice T. Rodrigues, Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil

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The ENTISE research project, a consortium of 15 companies and universities led by battery manufacturer Varta, is working on an innovative cell chemistry for sodium-ion batteries. The goal is to transfer this into functional cell formats.

The acronym ENTISE stands for ‘Development of Sodium Ion Technology for Industrially Scalable Energy Storage’, or as it is phrased in German, the “Entwicklung der Natrium-Ionen-Technologie für Industriell Skalierbare Energiespeicher.” The project is due to start on 1 June and run for three years. The core objective is to develop “industrially usable, high-performance and environmentally friendly cells”, as stated in an accompanying press release. The project, initiated and coordinated by Varta, is being funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research and Education with around 7.5 million euros. The consortium received the corresponding notification this week.

According to the initiators, a central component of the project will be the production of sufficient quantities of the necessary materials to build individual resilient laboratory samples through to prototypes in round cell design. “In the final phase of the project, the individual components will then be upscaled and transferred from the laboratory to the pre-industrial sector (piloting),” it continues. The final product of this upscaling will be a small series of round cells that will “enable a reliable evaluation of properties in practical application scenarios such as electric vehicles and stationary storage systems.”

Sodium is known to be readily available, inexpensive, safe and easy to dispose of or recycle. The challenge is to transfer this technology into industrially utilisable and scalable cells. This is where project ENTISE comes in. “For the German battery community, this project represents a milestone in the development of sustainable sodium-ion batteries. In order to further advance the future of decentralised energy storage and use, other innovative and powerful storage technologies are needed in addition to lithium-ion technology,” says Rainer Hald, CTO of Varta AG.

In the eyes of Varta’s Head of Technology, sodium-ion batteries can make an important contribution to the decarbonisation and electrification of many areas in addition to existing technologies in order to actively shape the energy and mobility transition. “The funding of this project is an important sign that the research and development of cutting-edge technology in the battery sector can have a future in Germany and Europe. Our thanks as a consortium therefore go to the German government, which has agreed to support ENTISE despite the reduction in funding for battery research .”

From a technological point of view, the project aims in particular to improve the storage capacities of the cathode and anode as well as the cycle stability. An accompanying technical, economic and ecological evaluation will round off the project.

Sodium batteries are an approach that has re-emerged in recent years and would bring a clear cost reduction in the electric car sector. We recently asked Markus Lienkamp, Professor of Automotive Engineering at the Technical University of Munich, what role the sodium-ion battery can play in electromobility. You can read his answer here .

In China, the big players are increasingly turning to sodium-ion batteries: at the end of 2023, BYD and Huaihai signed a contract to build a plant for sodium-ion batteries in China with an annual capacity of 30 GWh. CATL is also planning to produce sodium-ion cells, as is the Chinese company Zoolnasm . In February, we also recently reported that the JAC subsidiary Yiwei exported electric vehicles with sodium-ion batteries for the first time.

varta-ag.com

• battery cells
• Battery research

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