Heterotrimeric G-proteins, composed of Gα, Gβ and Gγ subunits, are important signal transmitters, mediating the cellular response to multiple stimuli in animals and plants. The Gγ subunit is an essential component of the G-protein, providing appropriate functional specificity to the heterotrimer complex and has been well studied in many species. However, the evolutionary history, expression pattern and functional characteristics of Gγ subunits has not been explored in the Rosaceae, representing many important fruit crops.

The cuticle covers the surface of the polysaccharide cell wall of leaf epidermal cells and forms an essential diffusion barrier between the plant and the environment. The cuticle is composed of cutin and wax. Cuticular wax plays an important role in the survival of plants by serving as the interface between plants and their biotic and abiotic environments, especially restricting nonstomatal water loss. Leaf cuticular waxes of hexaploid wheat at the seedling stage mainly consist of primary alcohols, aldehydes, fatty acids, alkane and esters. Primary alcohols account for more than 80% of the total wax load. Therefore, we cloned several genes encoding fatty acyl-coenzyme A reductases from wheat and analyzed their function in yeast and plants. We propose the potential use of these genes in wheat genetic breeding.

Chrysanthemum morifolium is one of the most popular ornamental crops. The capitulum, which is the main ornamental part of chrysanthemum plants, consists of ligulate marginal ray florets, an attractive corolla (petals), and radially hermaphroditic disc florets, but no stamens. In Asteraceae species, the zygomorphic ray florets evolved from the actinomorphic disc florets. During this process, the zygomorphic ligulate corolla arose and the stamens were aborted. Although molecular genetic research has clarified ray floret development to some extent, the precise molecular mechanism underlying ray floret development in chrysanthemum remained unclear.

Flower opening is an important process in the life cycle of flowering plants and is influenced by various endogenous and environmental factors. Our previous work demonstrated that rose (Rosa hybrida) flowers are highly sensitive to dehydration during flower opening and the water recovery process after dehydration induced ethylene production rapidly in flower gynoecia. In addition, this temporal- and spatial-specific ethylene production is attributed to a transient but robust activation of the rose MAP KINASE6-ACC SYNTHASE1 (RhMPK6-RhACS1) cascade in gynoecia. However, the upstream component of RhMPK6-RhACS1 is unknown, although RhMKK9 (MAP KINASE KINASE9), a rose homologue of Arabidopsis MKK9, could activate RhMPK6 in vitro. In this study, we monitored RhMKK2/4/5/9 expression, the potential upstream kinase to RhMPK6, in rose gynoecia during dehydration and rehydration.

Prairie grass (Bromus catharticus) is a typical cool-season forage crop with high biomass production and fast growth rate during winter and spring. However, its genetic research and breeding has remained stagnant due to limited available genomic resources. The aim of this study was to generate large-scale genomic data using high-throughput transcriptome sequencing, and perform a preliminary validation of EST-SSR markers of B. catharticus.