Publications by authors named "Benny Jian Rong Sng"

Article Synopsis
  • Hemp Cheungsam, a non-drug Cannabis sativa strain, has low levels of the psychoactive compound THCA and its cannabinoid biosynthesis genes were not previously studied.
  • RNA-sequencing was used to analyze flower, leaf, and stem tissues of hemp Cheungsam, revealing that cannabinoid biosynthesis mainly occurs in the flowers, with a strong emphasis on CBDA production over THCA.
  • The study confirms that flowers are the primary site for cannabinoid production, with high expression of CBDA synthase and suggests that key genes involved in cannabinoid biosynthesis have identifiable orthologs in hemp Cheungsam.
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Light is crucial for plants and serves as a signal for modulating their growth. Under shade, where red to far-red light ratio is low, plants exhibit shade avoidance responses (SAR). () and () are known to be negative regulators of SAR and physically interact with one another.

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Article Synopsis
  • Choy Sum is a type of vegetable that reacts significantly to changes in indoor lighting, highlighting the need for new cultivars for indoor farming due to a lack of existing genetic material.
  • The study created a mutant population using a chemical called ethyl methane sulfonate, isolating 154 mutants under low light conditions and identifying 5 of them that exhibited shorter heights and better shade tolerance.
  • The research concluded that mutation breeding is effective for developing resilient Choy Sum mutants, suggesting this approach could help create new cultivars for other crops in controlled environments.
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Vegetative shade causes an array of morphological changes in plants called shade avoidance syndrome, which includes hypocotyl and petiole elongation, leaf hyponasty, reduced leaf growth, early flowering and rapid senescence. Here, we show that loss-of-function mutations in HISTONE DEACETYLASE 9 (HDA9) attenuated the shade-induced hypocotyl elongation in Arabidopsis. However, the hda9 cotyledons and petioles under shade were not significantly different from those in wild-type, suggesting a specific function of HDA9 in hypocotyl elongation in response to shade.

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Plants respond to vegetative shade with developmental and physiological changes that are collectively known as shade avoidance syndrome (SAS). Although LONG HYPOCOTYL IN FAR-RED 1 (HFR1) is known to be a negative regulator of SAS by forming heterodimers with other basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factors to inhibit them, its function in genome-wide transcriptional regulation has not been fully elucidated. Here, we performed RNA-sequencing analyses of Arabidopsis thaliana hfr1-5 mutant and HFR1 overexpression line [HFR1(ΔN)-OE] to comprehensively identify HFR1-regulated genes at different time points of shade treatment.

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Background: Plants grown under shade are exposed to low red/far-red ratio, thereby triggering an array of altered phenotypes called shade avoidance syndrome (SAS). Shade negatively influences plant growth, leading to a reduction in agricultural productivity. Understanding of SAS is crucial for sustainable agricultural practices, especially for high-density indoor farming.

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Lettuce is commonly consumed around the world, spurring the cultivation of green- and red-leaf varieties in indoor farms. One common consideration for indoor cultivation is the light wavelengths/spectrum, which is an important factor for regulating growth, development, and the accumulation of metabolites. Here, we show that Batavia lettuce (Lactuca sativa cv.

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Background: Shade avoidance syndrome (SAS) commonly occurs in plants experiencing vegetative shade, causing morphological and physiological changes that are detrimental to plant health and consequently crop yield. As the effects of SAS on plants are irreversible, early detection of SAS in plants is critical for sustainable agriculture. However, conventional methods to assess SAS are restricted to observing for morphological changes and checking the expression of shade-induced genes after homogenization of plant tissues, which makes it difficult to detect SAS early.

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