Publications by authors named "Toru Fujiwara"

Membrane proteins targeted to the plasma membrane are first transported from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) to the Golgi apparatus. This study explored the mechanisms controlling plasma membrane trafficking of the boric acid channel AtNIP5;1 from the ER. Imaging-based screening using transgenic Arabidopsis identified six mutants in which GFP-NIP5;1 was localized in the ER in addition to the plasma membrane.

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Sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] has been receiving attention as a feedstock for lignocellulose biomass energy. During the combustion process, ash-containing silicon (Si) can be produced, which causes problems in furnace maintenance.

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Article Synopsis
  • High-throughput phenotyping can streamline breeding cycles and reduce costs, focusing on biomass-related traits in soybean using UAV remote sensing and deep learning.
  • In a 2018 field experiment with 198 soybean accessions, a convolutional neural network (CNN) was used to accurately estimate traits like dry weight and plant height from UAV-collected data.
  • The study showed that deep learning could identify strong correlations between input data and phenotypic traits, highlighting the potential use of these insights in improving breeding practices.
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Bioassay with an insect herbivore is a common approach to studying plant defense. While measuring insect growth rate as a negative indicator of plant defense levels is simple and straightforward, analysing more detailed feeding behavior parameters of insects, such as feeding rates, leaf area consumed per feeding event, intervals between feeding events, and spatio-temporal patterns of feeding sites on leaves, is more informative. However, such observations are generally time consuming and labor-intensive.

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Recent years have seen the development of novel, rapid, and inexpensive techniques for collecting plant data to monitor the nutritional status of crops. These techniques include hyperspectral imaging, which has been widely used in combination with machine learning models to predict element concentrations in plants. When there are multiple elements, the machine learning models are trained with spectral features to predict individual element concentrations; this type of single-target prediction is known as single-target regression.

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We proposed models to predict the effects of genomic and environmental factors on daily soybean growth and applied them to soybean growth data obtained with unmanned aerial vehicles. Advances in high-throughput phenotyping technology have made it possible to obtain time-series plant growth data in field trials, enabling genotype-by-environment interaction (G × E) modeling of plant growth. Although the reaction norm is an effective method for quantitatively evaluating G × E and has been implemented in genomic prediction models, no reaction norm models have been applied to plant growth data.

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Successful biochemical reactions in organisms necessitate compartmentalization of the requisite components. Glandular trichomes (GTs) act as compartments for the synthesis and storage of specialized compounds. These compounds not only are crucial for the survival of plants under biotic and abiotic stresses but also have medical and commercial value for humans.

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  • Legumes manage root nodule symbiosis (RNS) based on the availability of nitrogen in their environment, with a focus on internal nitrogen status influencing physiological processes.
  • The study particularly investigates how iron (Fe) accumulates in nodules and highlights the expression of IRON MAN (IMA) peptide genes during symbiotic nitrogen fixation in Lotus japonicus.
  • It is revealed that IMA peptides are crucial for balancing nitrogen and iron levels, impacting nitrogen homeostasis in both L. japonicus and Arabidopsis thaliana, ultimately contributing to the regulation of nitrogen-related processes.
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In response to environmental changes, cells flexibly and rapidly alter gene expression through translational controls. In plants, the translation of NIP5;1, a boric acid diffusion facilitator, is downregulated in response to an excess amount of boric acid in the environment through upstream open reading frames (uORFs) that consist of only AUG and stop codons. However, the molecular details of how this minimum uORF controls translation of the downstream main ORF in a boric acid-dependent manner have remained unclear.

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  • - Nutritropism refers to how plant roots grow toward nutrients, specifically how rice roots bend and coil around ammonium (NH4+) sources due to a gradient of this nutrient.
  • - The study analyzed the gene expression in different parts of bending root tips to understand how rice roots respond to nutrient signals, revealing distinct transcription patterns between the tissues facing the nutrients and those away from them.
  • - It was found that auxin, gibberellin, and ethylene hormones play significant roles in this process, and that auxins accumulate more in the side of roots facing the ammonium sources, suggesting that the nutrient signal is converted into hormonal responses similar to how roots respond to gravity.
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Article Synopsis
  • Scientists studied a special type of rice called 88n that grows longer roots when nutrients like nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) are low.
  • The 88n rice can use nitrogen and phosphorus really well, which means it needs less fertilizer but still grows nicely.
  • A gene called OsbZIP1 is responsible for making 88n better at getting nutrients, helping it grow larger and produce more rice than regular plants.
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The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has facilitated crop canopy monitoring, enabling yield prediction by integrating regression models. However, the application of UAV-based data to individual-level harvest weight prediction is limited by the effectiveness of obtaining individual features. In this study, we propose a method that automatically detects and extracts multitemporal individual plant features derived from UAV-based data to predict harvest weight.

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Under low-Ca conditions, plants accumulate salicylic acid (SA) and induce SA-responsive genes. However, the relationship between SA and low-Ca tolerance remains unclear. Here, we demonstrated that the inhibition or suppression of nonexpressor of pathogenesis-related 1 (NPR1) activity, a major regulator of the SA signaling pathway in the defense response, improves shoot growth under low-Ca conditions.

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Potassium (K) is a major plant nutrient. K+ is taken up by channel and transporter proteins in roots and translocated from roots to shoots via the xylem. In Arabidopsis thaliana, the K+ transporter NPF7.

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Plant response to drought is an important yield-related trait under abiotic stress, but the method for measuring and modeling plant responses in a time series has not been fully established. The objective of this study was to develop a method to measure and model plant response to irrigation changes using time-series multispectral (MS) data. We evaluated 178 soybean ( (L.

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Generation of mutant populations with high genetic diversity is key for mutant screening and crop breeding. For this purpose, the single-seed descent method, in which one mutant line is established from a single mutagenized seed, is commonly used. This method ensures the independence of the mutant lines, but the size of the mutant population is limited because it is no greater than the number of fertile M plants.

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Plant root system architecture shows complex patterns adapting to different nutritional conditions. In Arabidopsis thaliana, root slanting is a behaviour that is observed when plants are grown on a solid agar plate vertically. However, the regulatory mechanisms of root slanting in response to nutrient conditions are not fully understood.

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  • * This study found that low potassium levels impact CS permeability and lignin deposition through nitric oxide (NO), which acts as a signaling molecule involved in lignin synthesis and cell wall formation.
  • * The research shows that NO helps maintain nutrient balance and supports proper CS formation in roots under low potassium conditions, highlighting its crucial role in plant adaptation to nutrient scarcity.
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Excess boron (B) is toxic to plants and thereby causes DNA damage and cell death in root meristems. However, the underlying mechanisms which link boron and DNA damage remain unclear. It has been reported that the mutant of the 26S proteasome is sensitive to excess boron, resulting in more frequent cell death in root meristem and reduced root elongation.

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Marine teleosts ingest large amounts of seawater containing various ions, including 0.4 mM boric acid, which can accumulate at toxic levels in the body. However, the molecular mechanisms by which marine teleosts absorb and excrete boric acid are not well understood.

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Increasing the water use efficiency of crops is an important agricultural goal closely related to the root system -the primary plant organ for water and nutrient acquisition. In an attempt to evaluate the response of root growth and development of soybean to water supply levels, 200 genotypes were grown in a sandy field for 3 years under irrigated and non-irrigated conditions, and 14 root traits together with shoot fresh weight and plant height were investigated. Three-way ANOVA revealed a significant effect of treatments and years on growth of plants, accounting for more than 80% of the total variability.

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Boric acid is a vital micronutrient in animals; however, excess amounts are toxic to them. Little is known about whole-body boric acid homeostasis in animals. Seawater (SW) contains 0.

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Article Synopsis
  • Calcium deficiency negatively impacts agricultural yield and quality, with varying susceptibility among different crops and cultivars.
  • A novel gene related to low calcium tolerance was identified, revealing that a specific mutant strain of plants is sensitive to low calcium levels, which was linked to the gene's function.
  • Research showed that the shoot growth of the calcium-sensitive mutants was hindered compared to wild-type plants, and the interaction between the identified gene and previously known genes suggests a combined impact on low calcium tolerance.
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Multispectral (MS) imaging enables the measurement of characteristics important for increasing the prediction accuracy of genotypic and phenotypic values for yield-related traits. In this study, we evaluated the potential application of temporal MS imaging for the prediction of aboveground biomass (AGB) in soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.

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The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is a key compartment responsible for protein processing and folding, and it also participates in many signal transduction and metabolic processes. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are important signaling messengers involved in the redox equilibrium and stress response. A number of abiotic and biotic stresses can trigger the accumulation of unfolded or misfolded proteins and lead to ER stress.

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