[Wolfgang Schmidt] A spotlight on iron nutrition and interactions in plants
POST: Lee Tzu Wei
This month’s special issue of Plant Cell Physiology puts a spotlight on iron nutrition and interactions in plants, and includes a meeting report of the 19th International Symposium on Iron Nutrition and Interactions in Plants (ISINIP), by organizing editor Wolfgang Schmidt, and four review articles covering different aspects of iron nutrition, including sensing, transport and signaling; biofortification; and soil processes.
The cover shows cross-sections of a wheat grain (Triticum aestivum) (bottom left) and common bean seed (Phaseolus vulgaris) (bottom right) stained for iron with Perls' staining (blue) to show the fundamentally different distribution of iron in these two seed-types. Sample preparation was performed by James Connorton (John Innes Centre, UK) and Mashamba Philipo (NM AIST, Arusha, Tanzania), while images were taken by Phil Robinson and Janneke Balk (John Innes Centre, UK), respectively. Also shown on the cover is the visualization of fluorescent coumarins produced by roots of an Fe-starved Arabidopsis thaliana Col-0 plant pictured above the basic coumarin chemical structure (right panel); image supplied by Ioannis Stringlis (Utrecht University, the Netherlands). Finally, the top right corner features the 19th ISINIP conference logo.