We would like to congratulate Ayodeji Deolu-Ajayi with the defence of her thesis called: ‘How to root in salt: characterisation of key components in Arabidopsis acclimation to salinity stress. This thesis describes different mechanisms underlying early plant responses to salinity, with a focus on ion transport and hormone signalling.
In the same week Ayodeji’s paper “Genetic loci associated with early salt stress responses of roots” was accepted for publication in the new Open Access journal iScience. In this paper natural variation in the halotropic response of Arabidopsis is used to find novel regulators for early salt stress responses. A genomic wide association study (GWAS) yielded several interesting candidate genes, such as the cation transporter CHX13, the transcription factor WRKY25 and a gene with an unknown function, that she called Double Bending 1 (DOB1).
Roots in Salt 