Increased chloroplast occupancy in bundle sheath cells of rice hap3H mutants revealed by Chloro-Count: a new deep learning-based tool.

There is an increasing demand to boost photosynthesis in rice to increase yield potential. Chloroplasts are the site of photosynthesis, and increasing their number and size is a potential route to elevate photosynthetic activity. Notably, bundle sheath cells do not make a significant contribution to overall carbon fixation in rice, and thus, various attempts are being made to increase chloroplast content specifically in this cell type.

GOLDEN2-like1 is sufficient but not necessary for chloroplast biogenesis in mesophyll cells of C grasses.

Chloroplasts are the site of photosynthesis. In land plants, chloroplast biogenesis is regulated by a family of transcription factors named GOLDEN2-like (GLK). In C grasses, it has been hypothesized that genome duplication events led to the sub-functionalization of GLK paralogs (GLK1 and GLK2) to control chloroplast biogenesis in two distinct cell types: mesophyll and bundle sheath cells.

A single promoter-TALE system for tissue-specific and tuneable expression of multiple genes in rice.

In biological discovery and engineering research, there is a need to spatially and/or temporally regulate transgene expression. However, the limited availability of promoter sequences that are uniquely active in specific tissue-types and/or at specific times often precludes co-expression of multiple transgenes in precisely controlled developmental contexts. Here, we developed a system for use in rice that comprises synthetic designer transcription activator-like effectors (dTALEs) and cognate synthetic TALE-activated promoters (STAPs).

Promoter isolation and characterization of GhAO-like1, a Gossypium hirsutum gene similar to multicopper oxidases that is highly expressed in reproductive organs.

Cotton is one of the most economically important cultivated crops. It is the major source of natural fiber for the textile industry and an important target for genetic modification for both biotic stress and herbicide tolerance. Therefore, the characterization of genes and regulatory regions that might be useful for genetic transformation is indispensable.

Validating Internal Control Genes for the Accurate Normalization of qPCR Expression Analysis of the Novel Model Plant Setaria viridis.

Employing reference genes to normalize the data generated with quantitative PCR (qPCR) can increase the accuracy and reliability of this method. Previous results have shown that no single housekeeping gene can be universally applied to all experiments. Thus, the identification of a suitable reference gene represents a critical step of any qPCR analysis.

Efficiency of nuclear and mitochondrial markers recovering and supporting known amniote groups.

We have analysed the efficiency of all mitochondrial protein coding genes and six nuclear markers (Adora3, Adrb2, Bdnf, Irbp, Rag2 and Vwf) in reconstructing and statistically supporting known amniote groups (murines, rodents, primates, eutherians, metatherians, therians). The efficiencies of maximum likelihood, Bayesian inference, maximum parsimony, neighbor-joining and UPGMA were also evaluated, by assessing the number of correct and incorrect recovered groupings. In addition, we have compared support values using the conservative bootstrap test and the Bayesian posterior probabilities.