Multiple origins of green coloration in frogs mediated by a novel biliverdin-binding serpin.

Many vertebrates have distinctive blue-green bones and other tissues due to unusually high biliverdin concentrations-a phenomenon called chlorosis. Despite its prevalence, the biochemical basis, biology, and evolution of chlorosis are poorly understood. In this study, we show that the occurrence of high biliverdin in anurans (frogs and toads) has evolved multiple times during their evolutionary history, and relies on the same mechanism-the presence of a class of serpin family proteins that bind biliverdin.

Bacterial Infection Disrupts Clock Gene Expression to Attenuate Immune Responses.

The circadian clock modulates immune responses in plants and animals; however, it is unclear how host-pathogen interactions affect the clock. Here we analyzed clock function in Arabidopsis thaliana mutants with defective immune responses and found that enhanced disease susceptibility 4 (eds4) displays alterations in several circadian rhythms. Mapping by sequencing revealed that EDS4 encodes the ortholog of NUCLEOPORIN 205, a core component of the inner ring of the nuclear pore complex (NPC).

LNK genes integrate light and clock signaling networks at the core of the Arabidopsis oscillator.

Light signaling pathways and the circadian clock interact to help organisms synchronize physiological and developmental processes with periodic environmental cycles. The plant photoreceptors responsible for clock resetting have been characterized, but signaling components that link the photoreceptors to the clock remain to be identified. Here we describe a family of night light-inducible and clock-regulated genes (LNK) that play a key role linking light regulation of gene expression to the control of daily and seasonal rhythms in Arabidopsis thaliana.

A constitutive shade-avoidance mutant implicates TIR-NBS-LRR proteins in Arabidopsis photomorphogenic development.

In plants, light signals caused by the presence of neighbors accelerate stem growth and flowering and induce a more erect position of the leaves, a developmental strategy known as shade-avoidance syndrome. In addition, mutations in the photoreceptors that mediate shade-avoidance responses enhance disease susceptibility in Arabidopsis thaliana. Here, we describe the Arabidopsis constitutive shade-avoidance1 (csa1) mutant, which shows a shade-avoidance phenotype in the absence of shade and enhanced growth of a bacterial pathogen.