July 31, 2023

🌻 The Week in Botany July 31, 2023

I think if you want the authentic experience this week, you should punctuate each item with at least two lung-rattling coughs. This week the links are from Twitter and Mastodon. Though I’m aware I should refer to Twitter as X, because Musk thinks it was this week that he turned Twitter users into Cross Users. I’ll be keeping a closer eye on Threads from this week. There’s now a feed of people you’re following available on the app, so I’m not drowning in inspirational quotes.

There’ll be another newsletter next week, assume my lungs permit it. Until then, take care.

Alun (webmaster@botany.one)

On Botany One

Ecologists investigate what makes a fire healthy in Diablio Canyon
Research shows Bishop Pines take just eight years to bounce back after fire by producing abundant viable seeds in their treetop cones.

Can Food Gardens Help Universities Provide the Fruit of Knowledge?
Turning campus dirt into communal garden plots transforms universities into hubs of positive environmental change from the ground up.

Ancient Chinese Gardens Can Help Mitigate Modern Chinese Urban Heat
Scientists have found urban cooling solutions in the ancient wisdom of classical Chinese gardens, whose large green spaces and water features create wider cooling zones.

Visible Urban Trees Matter More for Satisfaction Than Overall Canopy Cover
Does it matter how green a city is if you can’t see any green where you are?

Wohlleben’s powerful trees – and words
A review of The Power of Trees: How ancient forests can save us if we let them by Peter Wohlleben.

News & Views

Greenland has greener history than previously thought
New analysis of samples collected from underneath Greenland's ice sheet reveal the Arctic island was much greener as recently as 416,000 years ago. The findings overturn previous views that Greenland's continental glacier, which covers about 80 percent of the 836,3000-square-mile land mass, has persisted for the last two and a half million years.

Enjoy the beautiful silliness of Edward Lear's "Nonsense Botany"
Enjoy the beautiful silliness of Edward Lear's "Nonsense Botany". These illustrations were created from 1871-1877 in a series of books about surreal, made-up plants.

Don’t be scared of rewilding, Monty Don and Alan Titchmarsh: it’s a garden revelation
Celebrity gardeners are in uproar – but abandoning perfection can both help the environment and create beautiful spaces.

Global patterns of biodiversity in seed plants unveiled
Understanding the origins and preservation of biodiversity is crucial as human impact continues to threaten our planet's rich variety of life. Often overlooked, narrow-ranged and evolutionary unique species play a vital role in shaping biodiversity. Their concentrated presence, quantified as phylogenetic endemism, reveals important centers of biogeographic and evolutionary history.

Even in the heart of Vancouver, you can forage for wild food and medicinal plants
How Snyder, owner of the B.C.-based Earth and Company, came to lead nature and foraging walking tours like the one I’m on is quite simple: “I have always had a love of the forest,” she says.

Petrified trees reveal Yellowstone geyser's ongoing battle with drought
Yellowstone's Steamboat Geyser has had decades-long dry spells brought on by a history of droughts, a new study finds. With global temperatures on the rise, the American West is projected to become drier. Sustained drought in this region could slow down, and possibly halt, Yellowstone National Park's famous geyser eruptions, the researchers say.

Home gardeners become accidental citizen scientists for Wollemi Pine
When the unusual branches of a tall tree were first noticed in a canyon northwest of Sydney in 1994, it sparked great excitement in the botanical world. The tree was new to science. It had very few living relatives and a lineage dating back millions of years to the Cretaceous period.

150,000,000 observations on iNaturalist!
These observations aren’t equally distributed across space. The map below bins observations in each of 64,800 1x1 degree grid cells covering the globe. Most are in North America and Europe and other hotspots like Taiwan, Eastern Australia, Cape Town etc.

Red algae proteins grafted into tobacco double plant growth
A Cornell researcher and her colleagues have solved one key piece of the molecular puzzle needed to dramatically improve plant productivity and increase carbon sequestration: They have successfully transferred key regions of a highly efficient red algae into a tobacco plant, using bacteria as an intermediary.

Scientific Papers

Exploring the identity of individual plant cells in space and time
Using recently published studies in plant sciences, Oliva and Lister highlight how single-cell technologies have enabled a better comprehension of tissue organisation, cell fate dynamics in development or in response to various stimuli, as well as identifying key transcriptional regulators of cell identity.

The inability of barley to germinate after submergence depends on hypoxia-induced secondary dormancy
Global climate change has dramatically increased flooding events, which have a strong impact on crop production. Barley (Hordeum vulgare) is one of the most important cereals and its cultivation includes a broad range of different environments. Gómez-Álvarez et al. tested the capacity to germinate of a large barley panel after a short period of submergence followed by a period of recovery.

Global hotspots of plant phylogenetic diversity
Regions harbouring high unique phylogenetic diversity (PD) are priority targets for conservation. Tietje et al. analyse the global distribution of plant PD, which remains poorly understood despite plants being the foundation of most terrestrial habitats and key to human livelihoods.

Targeted modification of CmACO1 by CRISPR/Cas9 extends the shelf-life of Cucumis melo var. reticulatus melon
Nonaka et al. attempted to extend the shelf-life of the Japanese luxury melon (Cucumis melo var. reticulatus, ‘Harukei-3’) via modification of the ethylene synthesis pathway with the genome editing technology, CRISPR/Cas9 system.

Creating a virtual leaf
This viewpoint discusses recent progress that has been made in transitioning from a bulk leaf approach to a 3D understanding of leaf physiology, in particular, the movement of CO2 and H2O within the leaf.

Improving plant heat tolerance through modification of Rubisco activase in C3 plants to secure crop yield and food security in a future warming world
The world’s population may reach 10 billion by 2050, but 10% still suffer from food shortages. At the same time, global warming threatens food security by decreasing crop yields, so it is necessary to develop crops with enhanced resistance to high temperatures in order to secure the food supply. In this review, the role of Rubisco activase as an important factor in plant heat tolerance is summarized, based on the conclusions of recent findings.

Litter quality controls tradeoffs in soil carbon decomposition and replenishment in a subtropical forest
Lyu et al. followed the in situ complete decomposition of added ¹³C-labelled high- (low C:N) and low-quality (high C:N) leaf-litter and its effect on particulate organic matter (POM) and mineral-associated organic matter (MAOM) fractions over 2 years in a natural subtropical forest.

Synthetic developmental biology: molecular tools to re-design plant shoots and roots
Developmental pathways are complex and riddled with environmental and hormonal inputs, as well as feedback and feedforward interactions, which occur at specific times and places in a growing multicellular organism. Rational modification of plant development would probably benefit from precision engineering based on synthetic biology approaches. This review outlines recently developed synthetic biology technologies for plant systems and highlights their potential for engineering plant growth and development.

Depth-dependent effects of ericoid mycorrhizal shrubs on soil carbon and nitrogen pools are accentuated under arbuscular mycorrhizal trees
Plant mycorrhizal associations influence the accumulation and persistence of soil organic matter and could therefore shape ecosystem biogeochemical responses to global changes that are altering forest composition. For instance, arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) tree dominance is increasing in temperate forests, and ericoid mycorrhizal (ErM) shrubs can respond positively to canopy disturbances. Yet how shifts in the co-occurrence of trees and shrubs with different mycorrhizal associations will affect soil organic matter pools remains largely unknown. We examine the effects of ErM shrubs on soil carbon and nitrogen stocks and indicators of microbial activity at different depths across gradients of AM versus ectomycorrhizal (EcM) tree dominance in three temperate forest sites.

Allelic compatibility in plant immune receptors facilitates engineering of new effector recognition specificities
Bentham et al. dissected incompatibility determinants in the Pik pair in Nicotiana benthamiana and found that heavy metal-associated (HMA) domains integrated in Pik-1 not only evolved to bind pathogen effectors but also likely co-evolved with other NLR domains to maintain immune homeostasis. This explains why changes in integrated domains can lead to autoactivation.

This country regrew its lost forest. Can the world learn from it?
Pedro Garcia nurses a plate of seeds on his lap. “This is my legacy,” he says, tenderly picking up the seed of a mountain almond – a tree which can grow up to 60 meters (200 feet) tall and is a favored nesting spot for the endangered great green macaw.

Careers

Assistant Professor in Plant-Soil Interactions (0.8 - 1.0 FTE), Utrecht
As Assistant Professor in the Ecology and Biodiversity Group, you will help us build a bridge from the soil to plants. The world is facing a set of unprecedented global pressures, including climate change and biodiversity loss. Our group focuses on functional ecology to help us understand, adapt to, and mitigate these ecological changes.

Assistant Professor Plant-Microbe Interactions (1.0 FTE), Utrecht
The Plant-Microbe Interactions (PMI) group within the Department of Biology is looking for an Assistant Professor in Plant-Microbe Interactions to strengthen our collegial research team and contribute to the education and training of our next-generation scientists. The PMI team studies molecular mechanisms by which plants orchestrate interactions with other organisms by activating the plant immune system to ward off pathogens and pests, while accommodating growth- and health-promoting microbiota.

PhD position on Harnessing the Potato Soil Microbiome Potential for Crop Resilience (1.0 FTE), Utrecht
Become part of the new research institute CropXR! Our programme with a budget of 96 million Euro for the next 10 years, aims to develop eXtra Resilient (XR) crops for durable agriculture. Plant biology, simulation modelling, and artificial intelligence are integrated into innovative ‘smart breeding methods’ to develop crop varieties that are more resilient to climate change and less dependent on chemical crop protection. In our interdisciplinary programme, four universities and dozens of plant breeding, biotech and processing companies collaborate. Together, we work on basic scientific research, data collection and data sharing, education, and advancing applications in agronomy and plant breeding.

Research Technician Molecular Plant Microbiome Studies (1.0 FTE), Utrecht
As Research Technician you will join the Plant-Microbe Interactions (PMI) group within the Department of Biology and support our collegial research team in the field of plant-microbiome interactions. You will work on the NWO-TTW-funded project “SPOTM: Sequence-based POTato Microbiome tools for microbiome-optimized potatoes” and the NWO-Spinoza-funded research programme “Bidirectional signalling along the microbiome-root-shoot axis: Towards future microbiome-assisted agriculture”.

Regular Faculty - Controlled Environmental Agriculture, Idaho
The University of Idaho, College of Agricultural & Life Sciences, Plant Sciences department, is seeking a tenure-track Research Faculty, Assistant Professor, to develop an extramurally funded, nationally and internationally recognized research program to address sustainable production in controlled environment systems. This candidate is expected to work independently and collaboratively with other faculty members in research and to engage industry as appropriate as partners and in outreach. Specific areas of research may include plant nutrition and disease, irrigation systems, hydroponics, vertical farming, and organic production within controlled environments.

Research Fellow, Birmingham
The post holder may synthesise the diverse and complex data collected at the BIFoR’s Free Air Carbon Enrichment (FACE) experiment, assimilate these data into models for carbon assimilation, propagate this assimilation into climate models, and/or explore the effects of compounded stressors (e.g. extreme events such as droughts) on carbon sequestration. The post holder will work closely with experimenters and contribute to field research.

Research Technician in Cereal Development, Leeds
We are motivated to understand how cereal development is regulated by environmental factors. To do this we employ a wide range of techniques rooted in molecular biology and molecular genetics. This role will be conducting molecular experiments to understand how early floral development is regulated by light and temperature. The role will include growing and phenotyping wheat plants, genotyping them and conducting more detailed molecular experiments, including expression assays and cloning to understand gene function. The position will support PDRA on this same research project.

Research Associate in Plant Development, Bristol
At the Plant Development and Evolution Lab (University of Bristol), we are interested in the molecular mechanisms that underpin plant shape formation and how these developmental processes evolve to generate plant diversity. This Postdoctoral Research Associate role is part of the BBSRC funded project “Deciphering the developmental basis of carpel and fruit shape” which aims to determine how genes control the growth processes that underlie carpel development and how are these processes affected by environmental stresses.