Auxin and abiotic stress responses.

Plants are exposed to a variety of abiotic stresses; these stresses have profound effects on plant growth, survival, and productivity. Tolerance and adaptation to stress require sophisticated stress sensing, signaling, and various regulatory mechanisms. The plant hormone auxin is a key regulator of plant growth and development, playing pivotal roles in the integration of abiotic stress signals and control of downstream stress responses.

Regulation of AUXIN RESPONSE FACTOR condensation and nucleo-cytoplasmic partitioning.

Auxin critically regulates plant growth and development. Auxin-driven transcriptional responses are mediated through the AUXIN RESPONSE FACTOR (ARF) family of transcription factors. ARF protein condensation attenuates ARF activity, resulting in dramatic shifts in the auxin transcriptional landscape.

Creativity comes from interactions: modules of protein interactions in plants.

Protein interactions are the foundation of cell biology. For robust signal transduction to occur, proteins interact selectively and modulate their behavior to direct specific biological outcomes. Frequently, modular protein interaction domains are central to these processes.

A Prion-based Thermosensor in Plants.

Some prion-like domains and low-complexity regions provide the multivalency required to facilitate protein phase separation to regulate protein function. Jung et al. (2020) demonstrate how natural selection of the ELF3 prion-like domain gives rise to an intuitive biological switch that directly responds to temperature.