Esculin simplifies functional analysis of sucrose transporters

Budding yeast is an important model system for the heterologous expression of plant sucrose transporters. The authors have exploited the ability of type I sucrose uptake transporters to transport the fluorescent β-glucoside, esculin, to develop a rapid and sensitive assay system that should be a valuable tool for the functional analysis of members of this sucrose transporter family.

Making mutant identification by next-generation sequencing more accessible

Next generation sequencing (NGS) is becoming a powerful tool for identifying mutations at the molecular level. This paper describes an innovation that has the potential to make the NGS approach accessible to many more laboratories. In the targeted parallel sequencing (TPSeq) method only genetically defined genomic regions are sequenced, making the process less expensive and the downstream bioinformatics more straightforward.

Facilitating studies of a novel type of C4 photosynthesis

C4-type photosynthesis is of major scientific interest because of its greater efficiency compared to the more common C3-type. Bienertia sinuspersici belongs to a select group of just three terrestrial higher plant species known to perform C4 photosynthesis without the segregation of different parts of the pathway into different cell types. It achieves this feat by partitioning its photosynthetic functions between two distinct types of chloroplast that are located in separate cytoplasmic compartments of the same cell. The authors describe methodology for isolating the two types of chloroplast, providing a means to investigate the biochemistry and physiology that underlies this intriguing photosynthetic system.