ABOVE: Researchers examined the roots of mutant Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings grown in agar for clues about genes’ functions.
ANDREAS BATTENBERG/TUM
The paper
J.A. Villaécija-Aguilar et al., “SMAX1/SMXL2 regulate root and root hair development downstream of KAI2-mediated signalling in Arabidopsis,” PLOS Genet, 15:e1008327, 2019.
Beginning with her PhD work more than a decade ago, Caroline Gutjahr has investigated the effects of karrikins, compounds that are generated when plants burn and that influence germination of fire-following plants. Last year, her group at the Technical University of Munich grew seedlings of an Arabidopsis thaliana mutant with a karrikin receptor knocked out. “The first thing we saw is that the roots are not growing straight down, but they’re slanting, so it looked very weird,” she says. The hairs on the roots, which are crucial to nutrient and water absorption in young plants, were also shorter and sparser than those on wildtype Arabidopsis.
With collaborators at ...
