đ» The Week in Botany April 7, 2025
I visited BiFORâs FACE experiment this week. This is a small wood with towers that release carbon dioxide around the trees, so that the local concentration is 150 ppm above normal. It means that you donât have to wait till the end of the century to see how trees might react to higher levels of carbon dioxide. I think itâll be helpful for me to understand how the data is generated for some of the papers coming out of BiFOR.
One result is that I saw bluebells. Normally flowering of bluebells proceeds northward up the UK, but the extra carbon dioxide means that I saw them here before theyâre out further south.
I donât know if Iâll have something to write up immediately about BiFOR this week, but there will be another email of the papers youâre sharing on Mastodon, Bluesky, and Twitter. Until next time, take care.
Alun (webmaster@botany.one)
On Botany One
Hummingbirds in the City: How Urban Life Shapes Their Role as Pollinators
A recent study shows that cities are transforming hummingbird behaviour, favouring generalist interactions with plants and altering the structure of plant-pollinator networks.
Adriana Corrales: Plants Are Not Alone
Botany One interviews Dr Adriana Corrales, a researcher fascinated with the intricate relationships between plants and fungi.
News & Views
Tree mycorrhizal associations regulate relationships between plant & microbial communities & soil organic C stocks at local scales in a temperate forest
Zhang et al took advantage of a 25-ha forest dynamics plot in 300-year-old temperate forest to determine the relative contributions of plants, their mycorrhizal associations, and decomposer communities to SOC stocks, while accounting for the well-established influence of local environmental conditions on SOC stocks.
Trumpâs âclimateâ purge deleted a new extreme weather risk tool. We recreated it.
The Guardian has recreated a searchable climate future risk tool developed by Fema but then deleted.
ASPB Calls for Support of NPGS
ASPB and 93 other organizations recently sent a letter to US Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials in support of for the U.S. National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS), a program managed by the USDAâs Agricultural Research Service (ARS) focused on conserving and distributing plant genetic resources. The NGPS maintains a diverse collection of plant germplasm, including crops, fruits, vegetables, industrial crops, and more.
Gigante: Revealing What Kills the World's Largest Trees
Investigating when, where, and why giant tropical trees die, to better manage forests and the global carbon budget.
Americaâs Brightest Minds Will Walk Away
America is at risk of losing a generation of scientists. Amid sweeping cuts to federal research funding by the Trump administration, job opportunities for young scientists are being rescinded, postdoctoral positions eliminated and fellowships folded as labs struggle to afford new researchers. As countless scientific projects come to a halt, the researchers who will suffer the most are those just beginning their careers.
This Hawaiian island's 'freakosystems' are a warning from the future
Ecosystems which have never been seen before are being accidentally created by humans. They offer a stark look into the nature of tomorrow.
Dark diversity reveals global impoverishment of natural vegetationâŻ
Nature study shows that the potential occurrence of plant species is significantly higher.
Clear-Cutting of forests decreases soil organic carbon for decades
Soil carbon content decreases for up to 30 years following clear-cutting in forested areas, according to a major study from the Nordic countries and Canada.
An open letter to graduate students and other procrastinators: itâs time to write ($)
Let me begin with a hard truth. As scientists, writing is our chief activity. It can be argued that it is the only thing we do that matters. It is the singular activity that you as a young scientist partake in that will raise your salary. You may have felt protected from this truth for a time, but this is unsustainable for the long term.
Read free via ReadCube: https://rdcu.be/egy4Q
Scientific Papers
A wheat tandem kinase activates an NLR to trigger immunity ($)
Plant immunity relies heavily on intracellular nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) proteins, which can act as either receptors or signal transducers to facilitate disease resistance. In wheat and barley, an alternative class of genes called the tandem kinases also contribute to disease resistance. Chen et al. found a pathogen effector that triggers the action of the wheat Sr62 tandem kinase. They demonstrate that the effector interacts with Sr62âs active kinase domain, enabling a pseudokinase domain to activate the corresponding NLR.
Misregulation of the jasmonate signaling pathway leads to altered plant microbiota interaction and plant stress responses (FREE)
The model plant Arabidopsis thaliana hosts diverse microbial communities collectively known as the microbiota. The plant microbiota is generally taxonomically structured. Some of the members can promote plant fitness including growth and stress tolerance. However, microbial imbalance can also result in deleterious effects, a phenomenon known as dysbiosis that was first coined in the gut microbiome field. To unveil the regulatory mechanism to maintain plant homeostatic interaction with microbiota, Lu et ak performed screening using defined synthetic bacterial communities. They identified an Arabidopsis mutant with altered microbial profiles, an overall increase of microbial load and microbiota-dependent growth defects.
Conserved effectors underpin the virulence of liverwort-isolated Pseudomonas in divergent plants (FREE)
Plant pathogenic Pseudomonas species naturally antagonize a diverse range of flowering plants. While emerging research demonstrates that isolates belonging to the P. syringae species complex colonize diverse hosts, the extent to which these bacteria naturally infect non-flowering plants like the model liverwort Marchantia polymorpha remains unclear. Robinson et al identify natural associations between Pseudomonas viridiflava and the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha.
Quantifying Plant Biology with Fluorescent Biosensors ($)
Plant biology is undergoing a spatial omics revolution, but these approaches are limited to snapshots of a plant's state. Direct, genetically encoded fluorescent biosensors complement the omics approaches, giving researchers tools to assess energetic, metabolic, and signaling molecules at multiple scales, from fast subcellular dynamics to organismal patterns in living plants. This review focuses on how biosensors illuminate plant biology across these scales and the major discoveries to which they have contributed.
Global impoverishment of natural vegetation revealed by dark diversity (FREE)
PĂ€rtel et al show that local plant diversity is globally negatively related to the level of anthropogenic activity in the surrounding region. Impoverishment of natural vegetation was evident only when we considered community completeness: the proportion of all suitable species in the region that are present at a site.
Pseudomonas syringae subpopulations cooperate by coordinating flagellar and type III secretion spatiotemporal dynamics to facilitate plant infection (FREE)
Isogenic bacterial populations can display probabilistic cell-to-cell variation in response to challenges. This phenotypic heterogeneity can affect virulence in animals, but its impact on plant pathogens is unknown. Previously, LĂłpez-PagĂĄn et al showed that expression of the type III secretion system (T3SS) of the plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae displays phenotypic variation in planta. Here they use flow cytometry and microscopy to investigate single-cell flagellar expression in relation to T3SS expression, showing that both systems undergo phenotypic heterogeneity in vitro in apoplast-mimicking medium and within apoplastic microcolonies throughout colonization of Phaseolus vulgaris.
Leafy liverwort genomes shed light on the evolution of ericoid symbiosis (FREE)
Castanedo et al sequenced the nuclear genomes of two leafy liverworts from Jungermanniales, and reconstituted ErM under laboratory conditions. They demonstrated the existence of a nutrient-regulated symbiotic state that enables ErM and underlies intracellular colonization of plant tissues.
A space for time. Exploring temporal regulation of plant development across spatial scales (FREE)
Plants continuously undergo change during their life cycle, experiencing dramatic phase transitions altering plant form, and regulating the assignment and progression of cell fates. The relative timing of developmental events is tightly controlled and involves integration of environmental, spatial, and relative age-related signals and actors. While plant phase transitions have been studied extensively and many of their regulators have been described, less is known about temporal regulation on a smaller, cell-level scale. Using examples from both plant and animal systems, Sasidharan et al outline time-dependent changes.
Non-canonical plant metabolism ($)
Metabolism is essential for plant growth and has become a major target for crop improvement by enhancing nutrient use efficiency. Metabolic engineering is also the basis for producing high-value plant products such as pharmaceuticals, biofuels and industrial biochemicals. An inherent problem for such engineering endeavours is the tendency to view metabolism as a series of distinct metabolic pathwaysâglycolysis, the tricarboxylic acid cycle, the CalvinâBenson cycle and so on. While these canonical pathways may represent a dominant or frequently occurring flux mode, systematic analyses of metabolism via computational modelling have emphasized the inherent flexibility of the metabolic network to carry flux distributions that are distinct from the canonical pathways. Recent experimental estimates of metabolic network fluxes using 13C-labelling approaches have revealed numerous instances in which non-canonical pathways occur under different conditions and in different tissues. Sweetlove et al bring these non-canonical pathways to the fore, summarizing the evidence for their occurrence and the context in which they operate.
Read free via ReadCube: https://rdcu.be/egCbF
A gnotobiotic system reveals multifunctional effector roles in plant-fungal pathogen dynamics (FREE)
Plants host diverse microbiota that influence physiological processes and can enhance resilience against invading pathogens that, in turn, evolved effector proteins to manipulate host microbiota in their favor. However, the complexity of microbial communities and their interactions complicates mechanistic research on processes governing microbiota assembly and function. Gnotobiotic systems are valuable tools to study plant microbiota by reducing complexity and enabling controlled microbiota reconstitution experiments. Despite their utility, no gnotobiotic systems have been established to investigate the role of antimicrobial effector proteins in the interactions between plants, their microbiota, and fungal pathogens. Punt et al present a refined gnotobiotic system designed to study these interactions, establishing protocols for infections with the fungal pathogen Verticillium dahliae across multiple host plants under sterile conditions.
In AoBC Publications
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.
Technician (Horticultural), Essex
Working closely with colleagues to support the ongoing technical provision and operation of GM facilities in the School, specifically for research groups within the Plant Productivity research grouping. Using specialist skills and expertise to support the School of Life Sciences in its mission for excellence in education and research.
Research Fellow in Plant Water Relations of Tropical Trees, Leeds
This role will be based on the university campus (with fieldwork in Brazil), with scope for it to be undertaken in a hybrid manner. We are also open to discussing flexible working arrangements. We are looking for a tropical plant ecophysiologist to be part of the project team for a new forest drought experiment in the southern Amazon that seeks to evaluate the survival limits of rainforest trees under intense drought.
Ingénieur(e) H/F en analyse de données génomiques des organismes photosynthétiques, Paris
La personne recrutĂ©e apportera un soutien technique et conceptuel pour les projets bioinformatiques de lâĂ©quipe dâaccueil. Il/elle mettra en application des pipelines d'analyses de donnĂ©es gĂ©nomiques gĂ©nĂ©rĂ©es au laboratoire en utilisant les mĂ©thodes les plus rĂ©centes (www.pnds-lab.eu). Il/elle proposera et dĂ©veloppera Ă©galement des stratĂ©gies originales permettant des analyses bio-informatiques ciblĂ©es et adaptĂ©es aux questions biologiques du projet GODESS (Orchestration des gĂ©nomes par le ppGpp lors de l'Ă©mergence des plantules du sol).
Secondary cell wall patterning in explosive fruit, Postdoc, Cologne
Secondary cell walls are the most abundant biomass produced by plants and a major global sink for atmospheric carbon. Secondary cell walls are organized into diverse, highly ordered patterns according to cell function. Exploding seed pods contain cells with distinctive, polarly localized secondary cell walls that underpin the mechanics of explosive seed dispersal in the Arabidopsis relative, Cardamine hirsuta. This project aims to investigate whether interactions between proteins at the plasma membrane and cortical microtubules are involved in generating the distinct secondary cell wall pattern found in C. hirsuta fruit.
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.
PhD Position in Plant Genomics, Bonn
The Crop Functional Genomics group of Frank Hochholdinger at the University of Bonn offers a PhD POSITION IN PLANT GENOMICS (Three years, 65% TV-L E13).
Goal of this DFG-funded project is to understand the genetic and molecular basis of the systemic modulation of maize (Zea mays L.) root system architecture by seminal roots to better adapt to drought.
PhD student in Ecology and Evolution, Stockholm
The Department of Ecology, Environment and Plant Sciences invites applications for a four-year PhD position in the framework of the project âHarnessing evolutionary transitions, machine learning, and genomics to decode pollen evolution and unravel sexual selection mechanisms shared across kingdomsâ led by Prof. Tanja Slotte in close collaboration with co-investigators Prof. John Fitzpatrick, Prof. Catarina Rydin, and Dr. Allison Hsiang at Stockholm University.
Postdoctoral Researcher Discovery and production of bioactive metabolites, Ghent
The group of Specialized Metabolism, led by Prof. Alain Goossens at the VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology, and the metabolic engineering research group, led by Prof. Marjan De Mey at the Centre for Synthetic Biology and located at the UGent Faculty of Bioscience engineering, are looking to recruit 1 junior postdoctoral researcher within the frame of a collaborative project. The Goossens lab focuses on the characterization of plant signaling networks that steer plant specialized metabolism within tightly regulated fitness programs, in particular those modulated by stress hormones
Assistant Professor, Transdisciplinary Wildfire Sciences, British Columbia
Fire is an essential social-ecological process, yet contemporary wildfires are the culmination of altered human-forest-wildfire relationships, exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change. UBCâs Centre for Wildfire Coexistence was established to contribute to novel approaches for society to adapt and coexist with wildfire. We are seeking an outstanding emerging scholar to lead world-class research in Transdisciplinary Wildfire Sciences with expertise blending social and natural sciences, and a focus on some of the following study areas: ecological and socio-cultural benefits of fire, prescribed fire and cultural burning, Indigenous-led fire stewardship, eco-cultural restoration, wildfire effects and recovery, ecosystem and community resiliency, applications to policy and practice, or related fields.
Postdoctoral Position In Plant Population Ecology, North Carolina
The Sheth plant evolutionary ecology lab in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at North Carolina State University (Raleigh, NC; USA) and the Angert Lab in the Departments of Botany and Zoology at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, BC; Canada) are currently seeking a highly motivated postdoctoral associate to participate in an NSF-funded study of range-wide demography in the riparian plant, scarlet monkeyflower. The project aims to understand how plant population dynamics vary along latitudinal and elevational gradients; how populations recover from extreme climatic events; and how rapid evolution increases population persistence under climate change.
Postdoctoral Researcher - Epigenetics & Cell Fate in Plants, New York
The Kim Lab in the Department of Biology at Syracuse University is seeking a curious and creative Postdoctoral Researcher to join our team. We study how epigenetic and genetic states shape cell fate decisions, enabling plants to adapt to changing environments. Our research explores cell fate reprogramming in response to intrinsic and extrinsic cues, focusing on its role in plant development and stress adaptation.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow - Symbiotic Nitrogen Fixation, North Dakota
The Department of Plant Sciences at North Dakota State University is seeking a postdoctoral research fellow to work in the soybean breeding/genetics program. The research project will focus on the genetic improvement of Symbiotic Nitrogen Fixation (SNF) by using new/modern tools to identify and select optimal combinations using soybean genotypes.