An increasing number of studies have demonstrated the significant roles of the interplay between microenvironmental mechanics in tissues and biochemical-genetic activities in resident tumor cells at different stages of tumor...

Plants lack lamin proteins but contain a class of coiled-coil proteins that serve as analogs to form a laminal structure at the nuclear periphery. These Nuclear Matrix Constituent Proteins (NMCPs) play important roles in regulating nuclear morphology and are partitioned into two distinct groups. We investigated Arabidopsis NMCPs (called CRWNs) to study the inter-relationship between the three NMCP1-type paralogs (CRWN1, 2 & 3) and the lone NMCP2-type paralog, CRWN4. An examination of crwn mutants using protein immunoblots demonstrated that CRWN4 abundance depends on the presence of the NMCP1-type proteins, particularly CRWN1. The possibility that CRWN4 is co-imported into the nucleus with NLS-bearing paralogs in the NMCP1-clade was discounted based on recovery of a crwn4-2 missense allele that disrupts a predicted nuclear localization sequence (NLS) and lowers the abundance of CRWN4 in the nucleus. Further, a screen for mutations that suppress the effects of the crwn4-2 mutation, led to the discovery of a missense allele, impa-1G146E, in one of the nine importin-α genes in the Arabidopsis genome. Our results indicate that the CRWN4 carries a functional NLS that interacts with canonic nuclear import machinery. Once imported, the level of CRWN4 within the nucleus is modulated by the abundance of NMCP1 proteins.

Nondestructive plant phenotyping is fundamental for unraveling molecular processes underlying plant development and response to the environment. While the emergence of high-through phenotyping facilities can further our understanding of plant development and stress responses, their high costs significantly hinder scientific progress. To democratize high-throughput plant phenotyping, we developed sets of low-cost image- and weight-based devices to monitor plant growth and evapotranspiration. We paired these devices with a suite of computational pipelines for integrated and straightforward data analysis. We validated the suitability of our system for large screens by evaluating a cowpea diversity panel for responses to drought stress. The observed natural variation was subsequently used for Genome-Wide Association Study, where we identified nine genetic loci that putatively contribute to cowpea drought resilience during early vegetative development. We validated the homologs of the identified candidate genes in Arabidopsis using available mutant lines. These results demonstrate the varied applicability of this low-cost phenotyping system. In the future, we foresee these setups facilitating identification of genetic components of growth, plant architecture, and stress tolerance across a wide variety of species.

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