Left: A blue light pulse of 0.1 seconds triggers a calcium signal (red) in guard cells, which is followed by an anion current (black). Right: The influx of calcium into the cell promotes the release ...

Scientists from Nagoya University and The University of Texas at Austin have unraveled a key mystery in the formation of stomatal cells in plants. Stomata are the holes on the surface of plants’ ...

The paper M. Papanatsiou et al., “Optogenetic manipulation of stomatal kinetics improves carbon assimilation, water use, and growth,” Science, 363:1456–59, 2019. In plants, guard cells control the ...

To test whether speed of stomata opening and closing can increase productivity and water use efficiency, researchers added the synthetic light-activated BLINK1 ion channel to guard cells in ...

Plants optimize carbon assimilation while limiting water loss by adjusting stomatal aperture. In grasses, a developmental innovation—the addition of subsidiary cells (SCs) flanking two dumbbell-shaped ...