Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, Academia Sinica

A broad-host-range Rhizobium rhizogenes strain enables transient expression across diverse crop species

Agrobacterium -mediated transient expression has revolutionised plant research, enabling numerous landmark discoveries across diverse areas of plant biology. Yet this powerful approach remains largely confined to solanaceous species, leaving most economically important crop famil...

Sample preparation of some plant tissues for transmission electron microscopy using high pressure freezing and freeze substitution

Abstract For sample preparation of biological block sectioning, high pressure freezing and freeze substitution (HPF-FS) is a better choice than chemical fixation. Freezing fixation can retain the original structures and preserve the soluble materials, and avoid the disadvantage o...

Establishment of a seedling-based regeneration system for Taiwan oil millet (Eccoilopus formosanus) to support crop domestication and C4 biology

Taiwan oil millet (TOM; Eccoilopus formosanus) is a semi-domesticated orphan crop with potential as a resilient crop species and a model for C4 biology. However, the lack of an efficient tissue culture system has limited its use in genetic and functional studies. In this study, w...

Sperm-specific fertility factors SMZ-1/2 promote FB-MO biogenesis and MSP filament assembly in C. elegans

Abstract In nematode sperm, motility is powered by polymerization of major sperm protein (MSP) into filaments assembled from a specialized organelle (FB–MO), but how filament formation begins is unclear. We identify two sperm-specific PDZ proteins, SMZ-1 and SMZ-2 (SMZ-1/2), that...

HOMEODOMAIN-LIKE shapes chromatin architecture and rewires leaf epidermal patterns

During development, cells balance proliferation and differentiation to generate diverse cell types, yet how these transitions are fine-tuned remains unclear. In the Arabidopsis leaf epidermis, stomata form through regulated cell division, whereas pavement cells and trichomes aris...

Profiling maize embryonic leaf development and discovering new genes using high-resolution spatial long-read isoform sequencing

Abstract Profiling transcriptome isoforms in their spatial context is instrumental for deciphering plant embryogenesis. By combining high-throughput full-length isoform sequencing and spatial transcriptomics (spatial MAS-IsoSeq) in maize embryogenesis, we identified 285,639 isofo...