The Week in Botany July 21, 2025
I’ve remembered why I don’t like reusing press releases. A lot of the text might be written, but if you want to check up on the release, then the amount of time reading the paper is just the same. So my plan to get some posts out easily was rapidly derailed.
Another factor in relying on press releases is that can miss some excellent stories, like the rare plant with a taste for toxic soil, which I loved. It was clearly project that took a lot of work, but it’s also nice to see that common sense and humans being good have a role to play in conservation.
It’s been an unusually busy week, this past week. I can see the schedule for the forthcoming week is also already starting to fill, so it might be busy next week. We have a great post coming out later today on plant names, which reminds me that I need to get my post on how to read a plant name finished.
No matter how busy I am, there will be another email of the papers and the news stories you’re sharing on Mastodon and Bluesky next week. Until next time, take care.
Alun (webmaster@botany.one)
On Botany One
Bats, Birds, and Blossoms: The pollinators of Merremia platyphylla
From bat visits at dusk to hummingbird sips at dawn, this plant’s clever pollination strategy reveals the power of flexibility in nature.
Itumeleng Moroenyane: Studying the Gossip in the Rhizosphere
Botany One interviews Dr. Itumeleng Moroenyane, a passionate scientist interesting in the intricate relationships between plants and the organisms that surround them.
Plant Thieves Target Everything From Gardens to Botanic Collections
Insurance data suggests plant theft is increasing, spanning local garden crime to international poaching networks threatening conservation efforts and botanic gardens.
Unearthing the Old Mystery of Underground Melons
After decades of sparse evidence, a recent study has brought new insights into the seed dispersal strategy of a peculiar African wild melon whose fruits grow hidden beneath the soil.
High-Speed Analysis Reveals Squirting Cucumber’s Ballistic Precision
What 17,000 Pressed Flowers Revealed About Arctic Climate Change
…and last’s week’s Week in Botany with a lot of heat with tropical plants, dead plants that lived in cooler climates and a sweet way for plants to sense heat.
News & Views
The other millennium dome: how Wales’s National Botanic Garden came back from the brink
Site had to be saved from closure after visitor slump in 00s but is now a thriving biodiversity success story.
Here are the flowers that both bees and humans like best
Scientists identified the best flower mixes to attract bees and hoverflies – appealing to the human eye and helping pollinators thrive.
Years of drought turn pine forest into source of CO₂
A new study conducted at the University of Freiburg shows that recurring years of heat and drought since 2018 have caused long-term damage to a pine forest in southwestern Germany. Over 60 percent of the pine trees have died, and deciduous trees are taking root, but it is insufficient to reclaim climate balance. The ecosystem now releases more CO₂ than it sequesters.
UHI Horticulture
This collection of courses introduces you to a wide range of topics including propagation, cultivation, design and plant biology which will improve your gardening skill and understanding of how plants grow. It will also prepare you for further study in horticulture if you are interested in taking your learning further.
They Have Their Doubts
What it’s like to be in school, trying not to use A.I.
Scientists hide messages in papers to game AI peer review
Some studies containing instructions in white text or small font — visible only to machines — will be withdrawn from preprint servers.
Researchers receive funding to boost the shelf-life of vegetables
A project led by Professor Steven Spoel and Dr Lindsay Williams has been awarded funding by the European Research Council to improve the longevity of some of world’s most popular vegetables.
Major funding boost to bring world leading researchers to the John Innes Centre
The John Innes Centre has been awarded an equal share of the new £54 million Global Talent Fund, to attract and support leading researchers and their teams to relocate to the UK.
Stand back! This explosive cucumber is bursting with seeds
Three summers ago, Kiel University biomechanist Stainslav Gorb, returned to Germany after a vacation in Turkey with a present for Ph.D. student Helen Gorges.
Recipe: wood + eggs + rice = ?
Nigel Chaffey looks into transparent wood.
This Week in Botany
5 Years Ago: Training and high quality images needed for best online annotation of digital specimens
10 Years Ago: Hanging On To Your Date, Avoiding Incest And Not Getting Infected – All In A Day’s Work For Flowers Of The Mustard Family
15 Years Ago: Moving beyond the ‘One-dinosaur-fits-all’ model of science communication
Scientific Papers
♻️ The N-terminal domains of NLR immune receptors exhibit structural and functional similarities across divergent plant lineages (FREE)
Chia et al show that the broadly distributed coiled-coil (CC) and toll/interleukin-1 receptor (TIR) domain families of nonflowering plants retain immune-related functions through translineage activation of cell death in the angiosperm Nicotiana benthamiana. Reshared due to the IS-MPMI Congress.
Guard cells on the adaxial and abaxial leaf surfaces use different compositions of potassium ion channels to drive light-induced stomatal opening (FREE)
Many previous studies have reported that stomata on the abaxial surface are more responsive to light than those on the adaxial surface. However, the underlying molecular mechanism is still unclear. By examining the model plants Arabidopsis and tobacco, Wei et al confirmed that the distinct feature occurred at the guard cell level.
Alien plants and novel ecosystems in the Greater Tropics ($)
Drawing on insights from community ecology, biogeography and evolutionary theory, Mungi et al examine the potential for alien plants to both exacerbate and buffer the impact of global change. Given the rapid ecological shifts underway, they highlight the critical need for forwards-looking management that integrates ecological complexity with social realities.
Read free through ReadCube: https://rdcu.be/ewmdL
Identifying the Climate Conditions Associated With Extreme Growth States in Trees Across the Western United States ($)
Ogle et al compiled ring widths for seven species (four gymnosperms and three angiosperms) from 604 sites in the western USA and classified each annual ring as representing extreme low, extreme high, or nominal growth. They used classification random forest (RF) models to evaluate the importance of 30 seasonal climate variables for predicting extreme growth, including precipitation, temperature, and vapor pressure deficit (VPD) during and up to four years prior to ring formation.
A major trade-off between growth and defense in Arabidopsis thaliana can vanish in field conditions (FREE)
When wild plants defend themselves from pathogens, this often comes with a trade-off: the same genes that protect a plant from disease can also reduce its growth and fecundity in the absence of pathogens. One protein implicated in a major growth-defense trade-off is ACCELERATED CELL DEATH 6 (ACD6), an ion channel that modulates salicylic acid (SA) synthesis to potentiate a wide range of defenses. Lundberg et al hypothesized that ACD6 hyperactivity would not only affect the growth of microbial pathogens but also more generally change leaf microbiome assembly.
mamp-ml: A deep learning approach to epitope immunogenicity in plants (FREE)
Stevens et al have developed mamp-ml, a machine learning framework for predicting plant receptor-ligand interactions. They leveraged existing functional data from over two decades of foundational research, together with the large protein language model ESM-2, to build a pipeline and model that predicts immunogenic outcomes using a combination of receptor-ligand features.
Aphid effectors suppress plant immunity via recruiting defense proteins to processing bodies (FREE)
Aphids are small insects that have developed specialized mouthparts and effector proteins to establish long-term relationships with plants. The peach-potato aphid Myzus persicae is a generalist, feeding on many plant species and capable of transmitting numerous pathogens. This study reveals how host-responsive cathepsin B (CathB) proteins in the oral secretions of M. persicae facilitate aphid survival by modulating plant immune responses.
Pseudomonas intra-genus competition determines the protective function of synthetic bacterial communities in Arabidopsis thaliana (FREE)
The plant root microbiota is crucial for nutrient acquisition, development, and disease suppression. Although commensal bacteria display host preference, their beneficial impact on their cognate host and mechanisms of species selection by the plant are still unclear. Amrhein et al use bacterial culture collections derived from the two model species Arabidopsis thaliana (At) and Lotus japonicus (Lj) to design synthetic communities (SynComs) and test their protective function upon exposure of At Col-0 to the detrimental root-colonizing At-derived Pseudomonasisolate R401.
Conservation and divergence of UVR8-COP1/SPA-HY5 signaling in UV-B responses of Marchantia polymorpha (FREE)
Ultraviolet-B radiation (UV-B) poses a major challenge to all forms of plant life. The liverwort Marchantia polymorpha (Marchantia) serves as a key model organism to study signaling pathways and to infer their evolution throughout the green lineage. Marchantia expresses key components of UV-B signaling, including the photoreceptor UV RESISTANCE LOCUS 8 (MpUVR8), the WD40-repeat protein REPRESSOR OF UV-B PHOTOMORPHOGENESIS (MpRUP), the E3 ubiquitin ligase complex CONSTITUTIVELY PHOTOMORPHOGENIC 1 / SUPPRESSOR OF phyA-105 (MpCOP1/MpSPA), and the transcriptional regulator ELONGATED HYPOCOTYL 5 (MpHY5). Liang et al show that MpUVR8 exists as a homodimer in its ground-state in vivo, then monomerizes and accumulates in the nucleus upon UV-B activation.
Remodelling autoactive NLRs for broad-spectrum immunity in plants ($)
Remodelling plant immune receptors has become a vital strategy for creating new disease resistance traits to combat the growing threat of plant pathogens to global food security and environmental sustainability. However, current methods are constrained by the rapid evolution of plant pathogens and often lack broad-spectrum and durable protection. Wang et al report an innovative strategy to engineer broad-spectrum, durable and complete disease resistance in plants through expression of a chimeric protein containing a flexible polypeptide coupled with a single or dual conserved pathogen-originated protease cleavage site fused in frame to the N terminus of an autoactive nucleotide-binding and leucine-rich-repeat immune receptor (NLR) containing a coiled-coil or RESISTANCE TO POWDERY MILDEW 8-like coiled-coil domain.
Read free via ReadCube: https://rdcu.be/ewZl4
In AoBC Publications
Filling in the Gaps: Evidence of Leaf Endodermis and Vein Sheath in Gymnosperms (FREE)
Surviving Allchar: arsenic and thallium tolerance and distribution in Viola metallophytes (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.
Group Leader in Discovery Plant Sciences, Norwich
The John Innes Centre (JIC) seeks a visionary Group Leader to lead research on Discovery Plant Science. We welcome applications from scientists with expertise in any aspect of fundamental plant science, including but not limited to, growth and development, environmental interactions, seasonal biology, cellular signalling, cell biology, genetics, epigenetics and transcription.
Independent Fellowship in Plant-Associated Microbial Interactions, Norwich
This position will come with access to JIC’s extensive resources and state-of-the-art plant growth facilities. The candidate will join a vibrant microbiology and plant science research community, providing excellent opportunities for internal collaboration and research synergy.
Research Assistant (Biodiversity Evidence Synthesis), Newcastle
We require a Research Assistant to support the work of Prof. Darren Evans and Prof. Gavin Stewart in the School of Natural and Environmental Sciences (SNES) who are leading a SAFELUX Work Package to gather and synthesise evidence of the impacts of street lighting on biodiversity (with a focus on plants, invertebrates and vertebrates, especially protected species).
Research Associate/Senior Research Associate - Climate Science, Bristol
The successful candidate will be responsible for carrying out and analysing climate model simulations from the HadCM3 Climate model and developing aerosol pattern responses in the PRIME climate emulator tool. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to work with teams at the Met Office Hadley Centre. Focus will be on exploring possible tipping points in the climate system which may cause large scale dieback of the Amazon forest.
PhD student in Plant Molecular Biology (M/F/X), Strasbourg
The PhD student will receive close supervision at the begining of the project until achieving full independence. They will be enrolled in the Life Sciences Doctoral School and scientifically supervised by the group leader, with daily guidance from experienced team members. Additionally, they will benefit from IBMP's collaborative environment, where multiple teams explore diverse aspects of gene expression in plants.
Postdoc researcher in plant molecular biology (M/F), Strasbourg
A position for a postdoc researcher in plant molecular biology is open within the team "Mechanisms of small RNA biogenesis and action". The candidate will lead a project aimed at understanding the evolution of novel RNA polymerases in plants and their role in transposon repression.
Associate Senior Lecturer in plant physiology with focus on plant embryo development, Umeå
An appointment as Associate Senior Lecturer in plant physiology /Assistant Professor (tenure-track) with focus on plant embryo development is available at the Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Umeå. The department is part of Umeå Plant Science Centre.
Research Associate or Research Fellow (Plant Synthetic Biology), Perth
The School of Molecular Sciences and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space is home to the research groups of Professor Ryan Lister and Dr James Lloyd who collaborate on the recently initiated Plant Artificial Chromosome project, funded by the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) to develop the world’s first bottom-up synthetic plant chromosome.
APPN Senior Phenotyping Analytics Manager, Adelaide
We are seeking a Senior Phenotyping Analytics Manager to join our dynamic team and contribute their unique skills to provide leadership in our central team and across our network of facilities in phenotypic image and data analytics.
Canada Excellence Research Chair in Forest Biodiversity Conservation (Full Professor), New Brunswick
The successful candidate will develop an internationally recognized research program that integrates advanced technologies with novel conservation and land-use policy frameworks to tackle urgent challenges at the interface of forestry, biodiversity, and climate. As part of this program, the successful candidate will lead the establishment of UNB’s Global Forest Biodiversity and Conservation Research Institute, an interdisciplinary hub focused on reconciling timber production with biodiversity conservation and carbon storage goals.