š» The Week in Botany February 3, 2025
Itās been an odd week. I donāt aim to discuss politics here for all sorts of reasons, one being that people might want a break from it for their mental health. Itās difficult when a prominent politician decides to target science as an enemy, as weāre pro-science here. Itās been demonstrated that employing the best rather than the whitest scientists produces better results.
From the outside, it looks like most universities are private or state institutions in the USA, so they donāt have to follow Federal directives on DEI for non-federal projects. So for now, USA jobs will only be included in the careers section, if I see a commitment to equality in the advert.
Iāve seen some objections to this reasoning. Musk now has control of the Treasury, so universities may feel compelled to accede his demands. This may be the case, but no one outside the USA needs to normalise this attack on science, and if an employer feels itās not safe to uphold equality, then itās probably not a safe employer and I shouldnāt be posting their adverts.
Next week I expect to be away, as a relative will be in hospital. I will try to have something come out for Monday, but this may not be possible, so you may have to wait another week for another email of the papers youāre sharing on Mastodon, Bluesky, and Twitter. Until next time, take care.
Alun (webmaster@botany.one)
On Botany One
Drones and AI: The New Age of Cotton Production
Researchers develop innovative techniques to track plant aging.
#InBrief
How Treesā Responses to Rainfall Frequency Could Help Improve Climate Models
An Anonymous Botanist has Poisoned a Herbarium in New York in an Unusual Way
BSA Public Policy Award
This award covers registration expenses for two early-career botanists to attend the Congressional Advocacy Event, held April 28-30, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Congressional Visits Day is an annual event hosted by the Biological and Ecological Sciences Coalition. Recipients obtain first-hand experience at the interface of science and public policy.
The first day includes policy and communications training provided by the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS), focusing on the legislative process and trends in federal funding for science, and how to effectively communicate with policymakers. Participants will meet with their Congressional policymakers, during which they will advocate for federal support of scientific research.
News & Views
Botanic Gardens must team up to save wild plants from extinction
The world's botanic gardens must pull together to protect global plant biodiversity in the face of the extinction crisis, amid restrictions on wild-collecting, say researchers.
The Mysterious World of Bull Kelp
Exploring the kelp forests of the North Pacific Coast.
āŖ@stillhopejw.bsky.socialā¬
Rare and Stinky āCorpse Flowerā Blooms Draw Thousands of Visitors to Gardens in New York and Sydney
People lined up to seeāand smellāthe blossoms of two pungent plant species, which only bloom for a short time every few years.
Academic Skyers: I am compiling a list of policies and statements from various universities about how they are handling the "pause" in terms of stopping expenditures (or not). Please respond to this post with your institution and materials. THANK YOU!
ā Jeremy Berg (@jeremymberg.bsky.social) 2025-01-28T17:35:28.662Z
Americans see gardening changes as 'plant hardiness zones' shift across half the U.S.
Here's a quick tool to find out if your zone has changed due to warmer temperatures.
āA slice of 1970s Babylon restoredā: living the office dream at the Hanging Gardens of Basingstoke
With its lush terraces, themed gardens and calm interiors, this trailblazing office building by Arup Architects has been treated to a subtle Ā£32m makeover that still has wellness at its heart.
Antique 'dead' plants dug out for climate study
The Dead Plant Society project will study herbarium sheets, which were collected by botanists and horticulturalists over the past 200 years.
āCrime Pays, Botany Doesn't has just done an episode on the Alerce forests in Patagonia and it just solidifies the opinion I already had that this would be one of the best places to film for a Cretaceous setting for a movie or TV series or whatever.ā
Guerrilla gardeners 'bring joy' by planting in town
A community group has been "brightening up" a Berkshire town by turning a patch of grass next to a car parking into a garden.
Scientific Papers
The atypical proteome of mitochondria from mature pollen grains (FREE)
Boussardon et al isolated mitochondria from both mature pollen and floral buds using the isolation of mitochondria tagged in specific cell-type (IMTACT) strategy and examined their respective proteomes. Strikingly, mitochondria from mature pollen grains have lost many proteins required for genome maintenance, gene expression, and translation. Their results uncover that mitochondria from mature pollen grains are strategically prepared for action by increasing their respiratory capacity and dismantling their gene expression machinery, which raises new questions about the assembly of respiratory complexes in pollen mitochondria, as they rely on the integration of proteins coded by the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes.
@umeaplantscicentre.bsky.socialā¬
Differential GTP-dependent in-vitro polymerization of recombinant Physcomitrella FtsZ proteins (FREE)
Bacterial cell division and plant chloroplast division require selfassembling Filamentous temperature-sensitive Z (FtsZ) proteins. FtsZ proteins are GTPases sharing structural and biochemical similarities with eukaryotic tubulin. In the moss Physcomitrella, the morphology of the FtsZ polymer networks varies between the different FtsZ isoforms. The underlying mechanism and foundation of the distinct networks is unknown. Milferstaedt et al. investigated the interaction of Physcomitrella FtsZ2-1 with FtsZ1 isoforms via co-immunoprecipitation and mass spectrometry, and found protein-protein interaction in vivo.
āŖ@reskilab.bsky.socialā¬
Growth decline in European beech associated with temperature-driven increase in reproductive allocation ($)
Climate change effects on forest growth and reproduction are widely reported, but indirect effects from their interactions are rarely demonstrated. In a 43-y study of European beech, rising summer temperatures led to more frequent seed production (masting), increasing total reproductive investment. This increased reproductive effort depleted stored resources, causing a 28% reduction in annual growth rates, even without increased drought stress.
@andrewhacket-pain.bsky.socialā¬
Remove saplings early: Cost-effective strategies to contain tree invasions and prevent their impacts (FREE)
Using a multiyear database of observations of an invasive population, Moyano et al employed an approximate Bayesian computation to fit an individual-based spatially explicit model to compare management strategies to reduce the spread, population size and impact of a woody invader, Pinus contorta, on grasslands in Patagonia.
mvh: An R tool to assemble and organize virtual herbaria from openly available specimen images (FREE)
Vasconcelos & Boyko present the R package mvh (āmy virtual herbariumā), which includes functions designed to search and download metadata and openly available images associated with herbarium specimens based on taxon or geography.
Transposon proliferation drives genome architecture and regulatory evolution in wild and domesticated peppers ($)
Pepper (Capsicum spp.) is a widely consumed vegetable with exceptionally large genomes in Solanaceae, yet its genomic evolutionary history remains largely unknown. Zhang et al present 11 high-quality Capsicum genome assemblies, including two gap-free genomes, covering four wild and all five domesticated pepper species. They reconstructed the ancestral karyotype and inferred the evolutionary trajectory of peppers.
Read free via https://rdcu.be/d7YSt
Expanding genomic prediction in plant breeding: harnessing big data, machine learning, and advanced software (FREE)
With growing evidence that genomic selection (GS) improves genetic gains in plant breeding, it is timely to review the key factors that improve its efficiency. Crossa et al focus on the statistical machine learning methods and software that are democratizing GS methodology.
Endogenous RALF peptide function is required for powdery mildew host colonization (FREE)
The receptor kinase FERONIA (FER) is a susceptibility factor for biotrophic powdery mildew fungal pathogens in Arabidopsis thaliana, but the underlying molecular mechanisms remain largely unknown. FER is required for the perception of endogenous RAPID ALKALINIZATION FACTOR (RALF) peptides to control various aspects of plant growth, development and immunity. RALFs are perceived by FER-LORELEI-LIKE GPI-ANCHORED PROTEIN (LLG) heterocomplexes to induce cellular responses and bind to LEUCINE-RICH REPEAT EXTENSIN (LRX) proteins as structural components of the cell wall. Leicher et al show that FER`s RALF ligands are necessary for full success of powdery mildew colonization.
The evolution of signaling and monitoring in plantāfungal networks (FREE)
Experiments have shown that when one plant is attacked by a herbivore, this can lead to other plants connected to the same mycorrhizal network up-regulating their defense mechanisms. It has been hypothesized that this represents signaling, with attacked plants producing a signal to warn other plants of impending harm. We found theoretically that plant warning signals are rarely evolutionarily stable. Instead, Scott et al identify two viable alternatives that could explain the empirical data: 1) being attacked leads to a cue (information about the attack) which is too costly for the attacked plant to suppress; 2) mycorrhizal fungi monitor their host plants, detect when they are attacked, and then the fungi signal this information to warn other plants in their network.
"We thought plants that are being munched on send warning signals to others, allowing them to boost defences. Turns out, plants are actually selfish jerks and their neighbours resort to chemical eavesdropping" - @joannabagniewska.comā¬
Cryo-EM structure of the NDHāPSIāLHCI supercomplex from Spinacia oleracea (FREE)
The nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) dehydrogenase (NDH) complex is crucial for photosynthetic cyclic electron flow and respiration, transferring electrons from ferredoxin to plastoquinone while transporting H+ across the chloroplast membrane. This process boosts adenosine triphosphate production, regardless of NADPH levels. In flowering plants, NDH forms a supercomplex with photosystem I, enhancing its stability under high light. Introini et al report the cryo-electron microscopy structure of the NDH supercomplex in Spinacia oleracea at a resolution of 3.0ā3.3āĆ
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In AoBC Publications
Black in Plant Science Summer Studentship 2025
The BiPS Summer Studentship aims to encourage students to consider a career in plant sciences by providing funding to support paid summer placements for Black undergraduate students.
These Studentships will address the lack of Black and Black heritage researchers in the UK plant science community.
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 in Plant Molecular Biology, Oxford
The post holder will lead a project investigating how the evolution of self-fertilization impacts genome and epigenome variation. The selected candidate will analyze Capsella species representing multiple independent transitions to selfing to identify common (epi)genomic features associated with this mating system transition, including host defenses against transposons and collateral impacts on nearby genes. This project is part of a larger effort in the Mosher lab in collaboration with the University of Georgia.
See also: https://www.mosherlab.com/joining
Postdoctoral Research Associate in Plant Biology, Oxford
We are seeking a Postdoctoral Research Associate to join the Jarvis group at the Department of Biology to work on a new BBSRC project entitled āUnravelling chloroplast TOC-TIC assembly, a vital component of plant greening and photosynthetic establishmentā. This project aims to elucidate how individual protein subunits are assembled to form functional multiprotein translocons. Having such a detailed understanding of translocon assembly is extremely important, because it is a vital process for photosynthetic establishment in plants
Graduate Assistant in Plant Genetics, Lausanne
The candidate will join a highly-motivated and diverse group of researchers who study the genetics and genomics of crop domestication using tomato and related species as model system. The successful candidate will perform research on a project to investigate the function of gene regulatory sequences in the context of crop domestication. More specifically, the candidate will study variation in regulatory sequences that affected flower formation during tomato domestication and engineer novel regulatory sequences by genome editing.
PhD Candidate on Regulation of translation during plant stress response, Brno
As a PhD student, you will investigate the stress-specialized translation initiation complex eIF4F and determine its biological role under stress granules formation. It is expected that you will become an expert in cellular biology, utilizing advanced microscopy techniques (confocal and super-resolution microscopy) and common molecular biology techniques, to visualize from protein complexes to single RNA molecules.
PhD Programme and IMPRS, Potsdam
University graduates who are interested in modern plant research can work on their doctorate at our institute. Our doctoral programme, the IMPRS for Molecular Plant Science (IMPRS MolPlant), is open to students from all countries. The doctoral research is done under the guidance of our directors, group leaders and senior scientists.
Postdoctoral position in plant molecular biology, UmeƄ
Plants spend a lot of energy to be in a stand-by mode for eventual stress conditions. Some of that energy could be used to create more biomass. We have identified a gene regulation circuit in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana that functions as a switch between biomass generation and stress response. By optimizing this circuit, we can potentially create plants that grow faster when there is no stress present and have increased stress resilience when a stress condition occurs. The project consists of work in Arabidopsis, barley and wheat. The candidate will use molecular methods (transformation, cloning, RT-qPCR, phenotyping, CRISPR-Cas9) to create superior plant lines. The project will also further investigate the molecular mechanisms behind the circuit. The project is financed by the Novo Nordisk Foundation.
Postdoc ā data-driven approaches for improved crop protection, Uppsala
Understanding the factors that drive crop pest and pathogen outbreaks is central to the economic and environmental sustainability of agriculture. Our understanding of how climatic conditions and crop management affect pests is, however, still incomplete, hindering the development of decision support systems for more effective crop protection. The postdoc will analyze large digitized monitoring datasets collated over decades in tens of thousands fields to assess how crop pests and diseases are affected by current climatic conditions. and predict changes under future climates. Based on the results, the postdoc will carry out in-depth and fine-tuned analyses for selected key crop pests and pathogens, including the role of crop management practices (e.g. crop rotation), to concretely support crop advisors and farmers with pest management decisions.
Postdoctoral Associate (Mass Spectrometry-based Plant Metabolomics), Minnesota
The candidate will help design and implement laboratory assays of endophytes present in monocotyledonous species. This will include selection of appropriate strategies based on current published standards for such measurement techniques, the assembly of the needed apparatus, and the design and implementation of assay protocols in our laboratory. The assays will be conducted as part of a team of researchers and so the candidate will be expected to work with and consult with other team members in the selection and design of the assays and to assist others in learning how to perform the assays independently.
Assistant Cooperative Extension Educator of Turfgrass and Weed Ecology, Connecticut
The Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture (PSLA) in the College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources (CAHNR) at the University of Connecticut (UConn) invites applications for a full-time (11-month appointment, 50% Teaching, 50% Extension) Assistant Cooperative Extension Educator. This is a non-tenure track position renewed annually with the expectation of long-term employment. The target start date is August 22, 2025, with flexibility.
Research Technician, New York
The Lamit Lab in the Department of Biology at Syracuse University, Syracuse New York is seeking a motivated, organized, detail-oriented technician to work on microbial, soil and plant ecology research. The technician will be responsible for a variety of day-to-day lab activities, with an emphasis on lab work and assisting graduate students. Activities will include DNA/RNA extractions, PCR, real-time qPCR, soil and plant nutrient analysis, clearing and staining fungal structures in roots, and basic microscopy. Other responsibilities may include maintaining fungal cultures, maintaining greenhouse experiments, and assisting with field work.
Program Associate - 12 MONTH, Arkansas
The Department of Horticulture at University of Arkansas seeks a Research Associate to work in the laboratory of Dr. Ainong Shi to conduct plant breeding and genetics in vegetable crops focused on spinach and cowpea, and also do research on vegetable soybean, green bean, and tomato. This job duties of the Research Associate include seed packaging, planting, harvesting, seed processing, breeding nursery maintenance and test plot management, data collection and analysis, greenhouse and seed lab management.
Assistant, Associate or Full Professor - Weed Science Pastures, Horticultural Crops and Non-Crop Areas, Tennnessee
Provide leadership for planning, implementing and evaluating educational programs regarding weed control in pastures, horticultural crops and non-crop areas (including rights-of-way, ponds) in Tennessee. Develop partnerships with county, district, and multi-state Extension faculty, industry representatives, Tennessee Department of Agriculture, and Experiment Station personnel to develop systems-based educational and applied research programs. Develop timely educational materials and programs for county Extension staff, producers, agribusiness firms and other agencies. Work closely with producer groups and industry representatives to promote practices for program support. Provide leadership for a strong extension and applied research program that meets the needs of all clientele regardless of race, color, national origin, sex, age, disability, religion, or veteran status.
Assistant Professor of Plant and Soil Science, Texas
West Texas A&M University, a member of The Texas A&M University System, invites applications for the position of Assistant/Associate Professor of Plant Science. This is an 11-month, tenure track position that reports to the Head of the Department of Agricultural Sciences.