On the cover: The regulation of stomatal aperture has been suggested as the first defense mechanism of plants against toxic gaseous substances such as ozone. Saji et al. (in this issue, pp. 2-10) isolated a novel Arabidopsis ozone-sensitive mutant that shows higher stomatal aperture than the wild-type plants, providing a genetic evidence for this hypothesis. The gene responsible for the mutant phenotype was found to encode a transporter-like protein belonging to the tellurite resistance/C4-dicarboxylate transporter family. The cover photo shows the thermal image of the mutant and the wild-type plants, which clearly shows a lower temperature in mutant leaves, due to a higher transpiration rate than in wild-type
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