Article highlights the importance of pectin in cell wall integrity and the value of lignin modification as a tool to interrogate the informational content of plant cell walls.

Article studies predation on livestock by wild carnivores in Sajama National Park (SNP), Bolivia. The authors monitored predation and other causes of livestock mortality in 33 ranches for one year and estimated biomass of livestock and wild prey and monetary losses.

Article reveals that plants can integrate different local and systemic signals generated during conditions of stress combination. Furthermore, results show that the specific part at which plants sense the two co-occurring stresses makes a significant difference in how fast and efficient they acclimate.

Article describes the high-quality, 887-Mb genome of jojoba assembled into 26 chromosomes with 23,490 protein-coding genes.

This article explores restoration, rather than protection, being the basis for developing a watershed level strategy for improving water quality in urbanizing watersheds.This study uses a geographical information system (GIS) approach that utilizes riparian characteristics extracted from 40-meter wide corridors centered on streams and rivers. The model was applied to 90 sub-watersheds in the watershed of an important drinking water reservoir in north central Texas, USA.

Article describes study analyzing the effects of a new purine derivative drug, PDD005, in attenuating mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases, using both in vivo and in vitro models.

Article presents novel insights into the molecular nature of the SH genes, thereby opening new avenues for coffee rust resistance molecular breeding.

Article presents a study where whole transcriptome sequencing (RNA-seq) and differential expression analysis were used to identify early (1–3 hr) transcriptional changes induced by the exogenous treatment of NAE 18:2 and NAE 18:3 in cotyledons, roots, and seedlings.

Article is a study exploring the possibility of using the tobacco retrotransposon Tnt1 to create a transposon-based insertion mutant population in B. distachyon.

Article filling the regional gap in knowledge of diet composition of the barn owl (Tyto alba) and the long-eared owl (Asio otus). The study was conducted at the Lewisville Lake Environmental Learning Area (LLELA) and examined the remains found in owl pellets collected September 2016 to March 2017.

This article considers areas of cardiovascular research that have benefited from studies of the chorioallantoic membrane (CAM), including the themes of investigation of the CAM’s hemodynamic influence on heart and central vessel development, use of the CAM as a model vascular bed for studying angiogenesis, and the CAM as an assay tool.

Article measuring lipid levels with mass spectrometry to confirm the previously observed changes in Arabidopsis thaliana leaf lipids under three heat stress regimens. Additionally, in response to heat, increased oxidation of the fatty acyl chains of leaf galactolipids, sulfoquinovosyldiacylglycerols, and phosphatidylglycerols, and incorporation of oxidized acyl chains into acylated monogalactosyldiacylglycerols are shown. The authors also observed increased levels of digalactosylmonoacylglycerols and monogalactosylmonoacylglycerols. The hypothesis that a defect in sterol glycosylation would adversely affect regrowth of plants after a severe heat stress regimen was tested, but differences between wild-type and sterol glycosylation-defective plants were not detected.

Article demonstrating that part of the function of two SEIPIN isoforms in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), AtSEIPIN2 and AtSEIPIN3, may depend on their interaction with the vesicle-associated membrane protein (VAMP)–associated protein (VAP) family member AtVAP27-1. The authors used a combination of biochemical, cell biology, and genetics approaches to show that AtVAP27-1 interacts with the N termini of AtSEIPIN2 and AtSEIPIN3 and likely supports the normal formation of LDs. This insight indicates that the ER membrane tethering machinery in plant cells could play a role with select SEIPIN isoforms in LD biogenesis at the ER, and additional experimental evidence in Saccharomyces cerevisiae supports the possibility that this interaction may be important in other eukaryotic systems.

This article finds that the transcript profile of the laccase gene ChLAC8 parallels the accumulation of C-lignin during seed coat development. Recombinant ChLAC8 oxidizes caffeyl and sinapyl alcohols, generating their corresponding dimers or trimers in vitro, but cannot oxidize coniferyl alcohol. The authors propose a basis for this substrate preference based on molecular modeling/docking experiments. Suppression of ChLAC8 expression led to significantly reduced C-lignin content in the seed coats of transgenic Cleome plants. Feeding of 13C-caffeyl alcohol to the Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) caffeic acid o-methyltransferase mutant resulted in no incorporation of 13C into C-lignin, but expressing ChLAC8 in this genetic background led to appearance of C-lignin with >40% label incorporation. These results indicate that ChLAC8 is required for C-lignin polymerization and determines lignin composition when caffeyl alcohol is available.

Article testing the tradeoff between protein and oil storage in oilseed crops by analyzing the effect of suppressing key genes encoding protein storage products (napin and cruciferin). This study provides mechanistic insights into the intriguing link between lipid and protein storage, which have implications for biotechnological strategies directed at improving oilseed crops.

This article shows that the activity of N-linolenoylethanolamine (NAE 18:3) requires an intact G-protein complex. Specifically, genetic ablation of the Gβγ dimer or loss of the full set of atypical Gα subunits strongly attenuates an NAE-18:3–induced degreening of cotyledons in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) seedlings. This effect involves, at least in part, transcriptional regulation of chlorophyll biosynthesis and catabolism genes. In addition, there is feedforward transcriptional control of G-protein signaling components and G-protein interactors. These results are consistent with NAE 18:3 being a lipid signaling molecule in plants with a requirement for G-proteins to mediate signal transduction, a situation similar, but not identical, to the action of NAE endocannabinoids in animal systems.

This article explores the relationship among MYB30, the ROS wave, and systemic acclimation in Arabidopsis by determining the SAA response to HL stress of MYB30 mutants and wild-type plants.

This article tests if it is possible to piggyback more than one antisense deoxyoligonucleotide (dO) with one vivo morpholino (VMO). The authors previously developed a piggyback knockdown method that was used to knockdown genes in adult zebrafish. In this article, the authors develop a method to knockdown three genes at one time, and by increasing the concentration of VMO by twofold, could knockdown six genes simultaneously. These multiple gene knockdowns will not only increase the efficiency of the method in whole genome-wide knockdowns but will also be useful to study multifactorial disorders.

Article reports observations of two Subarctic North Pacific puffin species in the North Atlantic near the coast of north-west Greenland.

Article presents a method that provides a novel way to synthesize NPs and expose biological organisms for various toxicological analysis.

Article describing the isolation and genomic characterization of 116 phages that infect Microbacterium spp.

Article aims to identify other proteases that may activate FVII using zebrafish as a model.