Monday, April 29, 2019

Plant cells eat their own... membranes and oil droplets

Biochemists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered two ways that autophagy, or self-eating, controls the levels of oils in plant cells. The study, published in The Plant Cell on April 29, 2019, describes how this cannibalistic-sounding process actually helps plants survive. It also provides mechanistic details scientists might leverage to get plants to accumulate more oil.

* This article was originally published here