đ» The Week in Botany April 28, 2025
The bluebells are now out in force at the side of the road, where I live, a few weeks after I saw them at the FACE experiment, where the higher CO2 had brought them out early. Spring is definitely well underway, and that means summer will be round soon.
One of the features of my summer is that I put together an annual report for the Annals of Botany Company on what Botany One is doing, and what we plan to do. If you have any comments on what we should be doing that weâre not, now is the time to send them. For example, up to now we havenât blogged papers if theyâre preprints. As theyâre so commonly shared these days, Iâm now wondering if we should.
There are a few political stories this week, but Iâve only included them where thereâs plant interest. At the moment the bulk of stories getting highlighted in my search system are politics, so they get cut out. The actual scientific papers seem to be piercing through the noise better than plant news stories at the moment. I will try tweaking the searches again. However, there will be another email of the papers and (some of) the news stories youâre sharing on Mastodon, Bluesky, and Twitter next week. Until next time, take care.
Alun (webmaster@botany.one)
On Botany One
Thatâs Why This Hairy Flower is a Trap
Some flowers go to extreme lengths to ensure pollinationâlike trapping their pollinators inside. A study by Matallana-Puerto shows how tiny floral hairs turn Aristolochia flowers into inescapable prisons.
How Is Human Mismanagement Reshaping the Biodiversity of American Forests?
Zong-Xin Ren: âAll Research Begins with Natural Historyâ
Botany One interviews Dr Zong-Xin Ren, a pollination ecologist fascinated with natural history and orchids.
Fire, Bees, and Ants: How Apodolirion buchananii Masterminds its Reproduction
A unique South African plant brings together fire, bees, and ants in a clever strategy to ensure its survival and reproduction.
News & Views
Armed groups, cattle ranchers drove 35% rise in Colombiaâs deforestation in 2024
Colombia lost 1,070 kmÂČ (413 miÂČ) of forest in 2024, according to data from the countryâs environment ministry, representing a 35% increase from 2023.
Colonisation des plantes : les pieds sur terre
Il y a environ 500 millions dâannĂ©es, les plantes aquatiques colonisaient la terre ferme, entraĂźnant Ă leur suite les vertĂ©brĂ©s herbivores. Que connaĂźt-on des mĂ©canismes Ă lâorigine de cette sortie des eaux ? Quelles ont Ă©tĂ© les adaptations nĂ©cessaires ?
Embracing the challenges ahead: a new chapter for the plant cell leadership
Pablo Manavella writes an editorial on taking the editorship of The Plant Cell.
A New Future for the Biodiversity Heritage Library
The Biodiversity Heritage Library is on the move from the Smithsonian.
The Desert Laboratory: Carnegie Science's Pioneering Role in American Ecology
Carnegie Science's Desert Laboratory in Tucson, Arizona served as an intellectual hub where pioneering ecologists helped transform the emerging discipline of ecology from descriptive natural history into a rigorous scientific field.
Controlled burns reduce wildfire risk, but they require trained staff and funding â this could be a rough year
Red skies in August, longer fire seasons and checking air quality before taking my toddler to the park. This has become the new norm in the western United States as wildfires become more frequent, larger and more catastrophic.
Labourâs great nature sellout is the worst attack on Englandâs ecosystems Iâve seen in my lifetime
The horrifying planning bill, which rips up environmental protections, was drafted with CEOs in mind. We know because Keir Starmer told us.
DOGE Is Now in Charge of U.S. National Parks
The Interior Department has come under the control of Elon Muskâs Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This means that the tech mogulâs team will be able to make changes to more than 400 national parks in the U.S. and over 500 million acres of federal land.
âThe trees will be cyborgsâ: meet the architect turning to plant intelligence
The Belgian pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, led by Bas Smets, will be occupied by a miniature forest.
Inside the controversial tree farms powering Appleâs carbon neutral goal
The tech behemoth is betting that planting millions of eucalyptus trees in Brazil will be the path to a greener future. Some ecologists and local residents are far less sure.
A 2,000-year-old battle ended in fire, and a tree species never recovered
An ancient Chinese army set fire to an enemy capital, but things got out of hand.
Ancient sand farmers of The Levant
Ancient Islamic farmers in Caesarea developed an innovative "plot-and-berm" system that transformed barren sand into productive farmland, offering potential solutions for modern agricultural challenges.
Scientific Papers
Satellite-based evidence of recent decline in global forest recovery rate from tree mortality events ($)
Yan et al assess forest recovery in vegetation greenness (normalized difference vegetation index) and canopy water content (normalized difference infrared index) for 1,699 well-documented forest mortality events across 1,600 sites worldwide. By analysing 158,427 Landsat surface reflectance images sampled from these sites, they provide a global assessment on the time required for impacted forests to return to their pre-mortality state (recovery time).
Read free via ReadCube: https://rdcu.be/ejzPl
In the nectar, there are answers: exploring the intersection of colored nectars and reactive oxygen species in manipulating pollinator behavior (FREE)
Nectar, a vital mediator of plantâpollinator interactions, exhibits remarkable chemical diversity beyond sugars, including reactive oxygen species and specialized metabolites such as pigments. Colored nectars, present in over 70 species, function as visual signals, inhibitors of microbial growth, or nutritional rewards, underscoring their ecological importance.
Root RADAR: how ârhizocrineâ signals allow roots to detect and respond to their soil environment and stresses (FREE)
Pandey et al discuss how hormones can act âoutside the plantâ as ârhizocrineâ signals that function to improve plant resilience to different soil stresses. They also propose a novel signalling paradigm which they term âroot RADARâ where ârhizocrineâ levels change in soil in response to environmental stresses, feeding back to roots and triggering adaptive responses.
Mobile immune signals potentiate salicylic acid-mediated plant immunity via WRKY38/62 transcription factors (FREE)
Systemic acquired resistance (SAR) is a broad-spectrum plant immune response that provides protection against various pathogens. Activation of SAR requires mobile immune signals as well as the indispensable immune hormone salicylic acid (SA). Mason et al demonstrate that the mobile signals, azelaic acid (AzA) and N-hydroxy-pipecolic acid (NHP), respectively dampened and potentiated SA-induced transcriptional reprogramming of thousands of genes. Indeed, NHP enhanced stability of the SA receptor protein NPR1, and unlike AzA, it dramatically increased the effectiveness of SA-induced immunity against bacterial infection by 10-fold.
Transport of phenoxyacetic acid herbicides by PIN-FORMED auxin transporters (FREE)
Schulz et al show that PIN-FORMED auxin transporters transport a range of phenoxyacetic acid herbicides across the membrane. They go on to characterize the molecular determinants of substrate specificity using a variety of different substrates as well as protein mutagenesis to probe the binding site.
Genomic and genetic insights into Mendelâs pea genes (FREE)
Mendel studied in detail seven pairs of contrasting traits in pea (Pisum sativum), establishing the foundational principles of genetic inheritance. Here we investigate the genetic architecture that underlies these traits and uncover previously undescribed alleles for the four characterized Mendelian genes, including a rare revertant of Mendelâs white-flowered a allele.
Re-analysis of mobile mRNA datasets raises questions about the extent of long-distance mRNA communication (FREE)
Paajanen et al perform a meta-analysis of existing mobile mRNA datasets and examine the associated bioinformatic pipelines. Taking technological noise, biological variation, potential contamination and incomplete genome assemblies into account, they find that a high percentage of currently annotated graft-mobile transcripts are left without statistical support from available RNA-seq data.
Convergence and constraint in glucosinolate evolution across the Brassicaceae (FREE)
Diversity in plant specialized metabolites plays critical roles in plant-environment interactions. In longer evolutionary scales, e.g. between families or orders, this diversity arises from whole-genome and tandem duplication events. Less is known about the evolutionary patterns shaping chemical diversity at shorter scales, e.g. within a family. Utilizing the aliphatic glucosinolate pathway Ramos et al explored how the terminal structural modification enzyme GSL-OH evolved across the Brassicaceae and the genomic processes that control presence-absence variation of its products (R)-2-hydroxy-but-3-enyl and (S)-2-hydroxy-but-3-enyl.
Single cell omics extends metabolic regulon via orthologous transcription factors from a pair of medicinal plant species (FREE)
The medicinal plant Camptotheca acuminata is a source of camptothecin, the starting material for several chemotherapeutic agents. Camptothecin is derived from the monoterpene indole alkaloid (MIA) strictosidinic acid, yet most biosynthetic enzymes downstream of strictosidinic acid are unknown. Catharanthus roseus is a medicinal plant that produces MIAs such as the anti-cancer agent vinblastine currently in use in the clinic. MIA biosynthesis in C. roseus is cell type specific, with the final stage of vinblastine biosynthesis restricted to the rare cell type idioblast. However, the cell type specificity of camptothecin biosynthesis is unknown. Through single cell multi-omics experiments, Bui et al detected rare MIA biosynthetic cells in C. acuminata leaf and stem.
Rhizobium rhizogenes A4-derived strains mediate hyper-efficient transient gene expression in Nicotianaâbenthamiana and other solanaceous plants (FREE)
Agroinfiltration, a method utilizing agrobacteria to transfer DNA into plant cells, is widely used for transient gene expression in plants. Besides the commonly used Agrobacterium strains, Rhizobium rhizogenes can also introduce foreign DNA into host plants for gene expression. While many R. rhizogenes strains have been known for inducing hairy root symptoms, their use for transient expression has not been fully explored. Lopez-Agudelo et al showed that R. rhizogenes A4 outperformed all other tested agrobacterial strains in agroinfiltration experiments on leaves of Nicotiana benthamiana and other solanaceous plants.
Deterministic colonization arises early during the transition of soil bacteria to the phyllosphere and is shaped by plantâmicrobe interactions (FREE)
Mayer et al identified 27 diverse genera of leaf-associated bacteria that could transition alone from a few cells near a germinating plant to mature leaves, suggesting that the soil-to-leaf transition is probably important for them in nature.
In AoBC Publications
Novel Perspectives on Plastome Evolution in Onagraceae (FREE)
The costs of reproduction can and do differ between the sexes (FREE)
The winner takes it all: a single genotype of Kalanchoe Ăhoughtonii is a global invader (FREE)
Careers
Note: These are posts that have been advertised around the web. They are not posts that I personally offer, nor can I arrange the visa for you to work internationally.
Postdoctoral Research Associate - Plant Development (Fixed Term), Cambridge
Applications are invited for a Research Associate position in the group of Dr Alexander Jones at the Sainsbury Laboratory, Cambridge University. Applicants must have or be close to obtaining a PhD in Plant Biology, Biochemistry, Systems Biology, Genetics, or related field. Where a PhD has yet to be awarded the appointment will initially be made at Research Assistant level (Grade 5) and amended to Research Associate (Grade 7) upon the award of PhD.
MSc Course Director, Norwich
An exciting opportunity has arisen in the role of Course Director for our highly regarded MSc degree programme in Plant Genetics and Crop Improvement at John Innes Centre.
Professor in Plant Chemical Ecology, Saint Etienne
The University of Saint Etienne seek someone with experience of teaching chemical ecology, preferably plant chemical ecology.
Postdoctoral researcher in Root Modelling, Louvain-la-Neuve
We are pleased to announce that we are opening a two - year postdoctoral researcher position at the UCLouvain (Belgium) for the DROOGHT project. This position offers an exciting opportunity to contribute to cutting - edge research in plant science and gain valuable experience in the field of
root modelling and drought resistance in cereals, with a particular emphasis on wheat.
Postdoctoral researcher in Root /Crop Modelling, Louvain-la-Neuve
We are pleased to announce that we are opening a three - year postdoctoral researcher position at the UCLouvain (Belgium) for the DROOGHT project. This position offers an exciting opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge research inplant science and gain valuable experience in the field of root and crop modelling and drought resistance in cereals, with a particular emphasis on wheat.
PhD position - Resilience of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning across landscapes, Wageningen
Wageningen University's "Sector Plan Biology" has been developed to perform fundamental biological research in the framework of evolutionary and ecological theory to connect the various levels of biological organization to understand the dynamics of biological variation. In Theme 5 - âResilient and multifunctional landscapesâ, we are looking for two PhD candidates working on resilience of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning across landscapes.
Doctoral student (m/f/d) in Paleobotany, Frankfurt
As part of the Emmy Noether Project âSpatial signal and bias in the fossil record of seed plants in the late Mesozoicâ led by Dr. Mario Coiro, we are hiring a doctoral student (m/f/d) for a 30 month term contract with possibility of a 6 month extension.
Post-doctoral position in plant virology, Uppsala
We are looking for you who would like to be a part of our team to identify resistance to virus yellows in sugar beet. Using molecular methods and sequence analyses, you will map the diversity in Sweden of the viruses, which cause virus yellows. You will also develop molecular tools to facilitate the identification of resistant plants. The final aim is sustainable cultivation of sugar beet in Sweden using cultivars with strong resistance against virus yellows.
Postdoc - Evolution of cross-kingdom RNA crosstalk, NeuchĂątel
Crop pathogens threaten global food security, with small RNAs (sRNAs) playing key roles in some host-pathogen interactions. This project focuses on Botrytis cinerea and will attempt to recapitulate small RNA evolution.
Associate Lecturer in Biology, Melbourne
An exciting opportunity is available for an Education Focused Associate Lecturer to contribute to the School of BioSciencesâ first-year biology program. In this role, you will engage in teaching activities such as delivering classes, marking assessments, supporting students, and contributing to curriculum development.
Lecturer / Senior Lecturer / Associate Professor in Genomics, Melbourne
Join the School of BioSciences at the University of Melbourne as a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor in Genetics and Genomics. You'll have the opportunity to lead innovative research programs, teach and mentor students, and collaborate with experts across plant, insect, and microbial biology. This role offers a balanced 40/40/20 split between research, teaching, and service, allowing you to make significant contributions to your field while shaping the next generation of biologists.
Assistant Professor in Dry Bean Agronomy and Pest Management, Ontario
The Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph invites applications for a tenure-track position at the Assistant Professor level for the Professorship in Dry Bean Agronomy and Pest Management. This position is located at the University of Guelph's Ridgetown Campus, located in the municipality of Chatham-Kent, 200 km southwest of the University's main campus in Guelph.
You can find USA jobs at Plantae.