Chan Yul Yoo, Emily Yang, Elise Pasoreck, and He Wang published two back-to-back research articles in Nature Communications on their exciting new discoveries of a novel light signaling mechanism that triggers plant greening.
All flowering plants turn green only in the presence of light. Light, as an environmental signal, is first perceived by the red and far-red photoreceptors, phytochromes. Phytochromes then turn on the genes required for plant greening or the making of the photosynthetic organelle — the chloroplast. The photosynthesis-associated genes are encoded by both the nuclear and plastidial genomes. While it is well understood how phytochromes regulate nuclear gene expression, how phytochromes — localizing mostly in the nucleus — control plastid gene expression remains largely unknown. The two new research articles, Yoo et al. and Yang el al., reveal a nucleus-to-plastid signaling pathway by which phytochromes from the nucleus controls plastid gene expression.
Here is UCR’s press release: https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2019/06/14/its-not-easy-being-green
Links to the articles:
Yoo et al.: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10518-0
Yang et al: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10517-1