Analyses of three newly sequenced modern cultivar cotton genomes revealed sequence and structural variation alongside traces of ancient and ongoing introgressions. Moreover, transcriptome analysis pointed at unique fibre quality traits of cultivars.

In most flowering plants, early divisions of endosperm nuclei are not succeeded by cellularization. This study uncovered a family of clustered auxin response factors as dosage-sensitive, maternally expressed regulators of endosperm cellularization.

Removing the large inverted repeat region from the chloroplast genome revealed a gene dosage benefit for the ribosomal RNA operon. The reduced genome size resulted in increased genome copy numbers and offers potential for synthetic biology.

This study reports the structure of a photosystem I assembly intermediate isolated from greening oat seedlings. It defines PsaF as a regulatory checkpoint promoting the association of LHCI that couples biogenesis to function.

Hybrid seed production is a labour-intensive manual process that limits fully mechanized hybrid rice breeding. We identify GSE3 as a gene that regulates grain size and demonstrate that fully mechanized hybrid seed production and increased seed number can be achieved using small-grain alleles of GSE3 in male sterile lines.

The rice protein Ptr defends against blast disease by detecting the effector AVR-Pita in an allele-specific manner. The immune receptor Pi-ta proved to have no function in this process, contrary to what was previously reported.

The authors present the design principles of a synthetic earthmoss (Physcomitrium patens) genome. To aid future genome design projects, they also develop GenoDesigner, a software package that provides users with an intuitive graphical interface to efficiently manipulate genomic sequences.

In Marchantia polymorpha, sperm cells are released from the antheridium into the surroundings. The process is facilitated by MpMLO1, which initiates Ca²⁺-dependent programmed cell death of tip jacket cells of the mature antheridium, enabling water to enter and ultimately resulting in the bursting of the antheridium and the discharge of sperm.

The manual-labour-intensive hybrid seed production process is a limiting step for fully mechanized hybrid rice breeding. This work demonstrates that the use of ideal small-grain alleles of GSE3 enables fully mechanized hybrid rice breeding.

The endosperm is a seed tissue that supports the embryo. In most flowering plant species, the endosperm starts as a coenocyte that cellularizes after a defined number of mitotic divisions. We show that endosperm cellularization is under antagonistic parental control mediated by a family of maternally expressed auxin response factors.

This study reports the structure of a photosystem I assembly intermediate isolated from greening oat seedlings. It defines PsaF as a regulatory checkpoint promoting the association of LHCI that couples biogenesis to function.

Analyses of three newly sequenced modern cultivar cotton genomes revealed sequence and structural variation alongside traces of ancient and ongoing introgressions. Moreover, transcriptome analysis pointed at unique fibre quality traits of cultivars.