Like communities of people, communities of cells must continuously communicate to thrive.
Polypeptide signaling molecules that act as mobile ligands are widely used by eukaryotic …

The shoot meristem of land plants maintains the capacity for organ generation throughout its
lifespan due to a group of undifferentiated stem cells. Most meristems are shaped like a …

Several yield-related traits selected during crop domestication and improvement, are
associated with increases in meristem size, which is controlled by CLE peptide signals in the …

Networks are powerful tools to uncover functional roles of genes in phenotypic variation at a
system-wide scale. Here, we constructed a maize network map that contains the genomic …

Crop productivity depends on activity of meristems that produce optimized plant
architectures, including that of the maize ear. A comprehensive understanding of …

Cultivation of crops in urban environments might reduce the environmental impact of food
production,,–. However, lack of available land in cities and a need for rapid crop cycling, to …

Epistasis between genes is traditionally studied with mutations that eliminate protein activity,
but most natural genetic variation is in cis-regulatory DNA and influences gene expression …

Cis-regulatory mutations underlie important crop domestication and improvement traits,.
However, limited allelic diversity has hindered functional dissection of the large number of …

Anthocyanin fruit (Aft) and atroviolacea (atv) were characterized in wild tomato and can
enhance anthocyanin content in tomato fruit. However, the gene underlying the Aft locus and …

A dramatic evolution of fruit size has accompanied the domestication and improvement of
fruit-bearing crop species. In tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), naturally occurring cis …