August 1, 2022

🌻 TWiB August 1, 2022

I've not been paying too much attention to Twitter this week, as I've been busy with work. So thanks to the people who shared the story on rock dust in urban gardens. It's an interesting story that I would have missed.

It's likely to be busy for a couple more weeks as people disappear on holiday. At the moment I have no holiday plans, as the plants and local wildlife need someone to provide water during the local drought.

As I'm planning to stay isolated at home, I'm hoping I'll avoid COVID for another week, and another newsletter will be with you at the same time next week. Until then, take care.

Alun (webmaster@botany.one)

In Botany One

Greening the next generation — botany.one

Nigel Chaffey reviews The Green Planet by Leisa Stewart–Sharpe and Kim Smith,

A nose becomes fancier, an armyworm answer, and plants against cancer — botany.one Scientists take different approaches to tackle crop pests, and a well-known plant produces a protein that inhibits tumour growth in mammals.

The benefits of a network view of selection response for complex traits — botany.one A new gene-to-phenotype network for shoot branching.

Dutch Scientists Learn How to Get Better Botanical Data from the Public — botany.one Instead of complaining about the limits of volunteer work, some Dutch botanists have found how to improve their understanding of data from citizen scientists.

News & Views

Supercharged biotech rice yields 40% more grain Genetic tweak may boost photosynthesis and fertilizer absorption in wheat, other crops, too

Oak Fire: Wildfire grows as firefighters battle punishing heat — www.bbc.co.uk A fast-moving wildfire in California continues to grow in size, firefighters say, as they struggle through sweltering temperatures.

Which honeybees are declining and which are not? Over the weekend there was a discussion on Twitter about “beewashing” that was spun out of this tweet by London beekeeper Richard Glassborow. Richard and his colleagues are some of the most responsible beekeepers that I know and they are getting increasingly frustrated by claims from irresponsible companies that keeping a hive of bees in your garden will help to “save the bees”, backed up by spurious claims that “honeybee colonies are dying out”.

The audacious PR plot that seeded doubt about climate change — www.bbc.co.uk Thirty years ago, a bold plan was cooked up to spread doubt and persuade the public that climate change was not a problem. The little-known meeting - between some of America's biggest industrial players and a PR genius - forged a devastatingly successful strategy that endured for years, and the consequences of which are all around us.

Trees Are Overrated — www.theatlantic.com Preserving the world’s great expanses of grass could be essential to combatting climate change.

Tanisha M. Williams—Recipient of the 2021 Peter Raven Award

The deserving recipient of the 2021 Peter Raven Award is Dr. Tanisha Williams. Although still in her early career stage, Tanisha excels at outreach to non-scientists, and she has already reached more members of the general public than most ASPT members will throughout our entire careers!

Rare plants attract rare bees and birds in urban gardens — phys.org Urban gardens can be hotspots for biodiversity in cities, but little is known about what drives the biodiversity of species existing at the smallest frequencies, or rare biodiversity. Rare plant species in urban gardens attract rare bee and bird species, according to a Dartmouth-led study examining urban garden sites in northern California.

Do two PhDs make twice the researcher? Some scientists earn two PhD degrees to expand their skills, cross fields or create a niche research programme.

Pakistanis plant trees to provide relief from scorching sun — www.reuters.com Surrounded by neem saplings and vegetables sprouting up from scrubland in the Clifton district of Pakistan's largest city Karachi, the 61-year-old recalls a time a few years ago when the area was a giant, informal rubbish tip.

Brooklyn scientist tries out ‘rock dust’ to grow better garden and fight carbon pollution — gothamist.com A few small orange flags stuck in the dirt are the only markers that distinguish Kwesi Joseph’s kale and collard plantings from the rows of other lush vegetables at the Hands and Heart Community Garden on New Lots Avenue in East New York. But Joseph, an urban gardens specialist for the Cornell Cooperative Extension, is conducting a low-tech and audacious experiment with those vegetables.

Meet the Giant Sequoia, the 'Super Tree' Built to Withstand Fire — www.scientificamerican.com Mammoth redwood trees have evolved along with fire, but humans are disrupting that delicate balance

What's your favourite native tree? Vote in our poll to determine Australia's most loved Australia has some of the world's most unique and beautiful trees. To celebrate National Science Week (August 13-21), we want to find Australia's most loved native tree species.

How you can help your lawn and plants survive the drought The drought can be seen in just about everyone's backyard. And many have asked what they can do to keep their lawns and gardens alive and viable. All hope is not lost! Resident expert WBZ-TV meteorologist Dave Epstein has some great tips for us.

Like Bees of the Seas, These Crustaceans Pollinate Seaweed — www.nytimes.com It’s the first known case of an animal helping algae reproduce, and could suggest that pollination first evolved in the world’s ancient oceans.

Scientific Papers

Sugars dominate the seagrass rhizosphere — www.nature.com

Sogin et al. show that the seagrass, Posidonia oceanica excretes sugars, mainly sucrose, into its rhizosphere. These sugars accumulate to µM concentrations—nearly 80 times higher than previously observed in marine environments. This finding is unexpected as sugars are readily consumed by microorganisms.

Evolutionary history of grazing and resources determine herbivore exclusion effects on plant diversity — www.nature.com

Ecological models predict that the effects of mammalian herbivore exclusion on plant diversity depend on resource availability and plant exposure to ungulate grazing over evolutionary time. Using an experiment replicated in 57 grasslands on six continents, with contrasting evolutionary history of grazing, Price et al. tested how resources (mean annual precipitation and soil nutrients) determine herbivore exclusion effects on plant diversity, richness and evenness

Auxin-driven ecophysiological diversification of leaves in domesticated tomato — academic.oup.com

Moreira et al. identify the obv gene and the causative mutation, a nonsynonymous amino acid change that disrupts a C2H2 zinc finger motif in a putative transcription factor. This mutation exists as a polymorphism in the natural range of wild tomatoes but has increased in frequency in domesticated tomatoes, suggesting that the latter diversified into heterobaric and homobaric leaf types. The obv mutant displays reduced vein density, leaf hydraulic conductance and photosynthetic assimilation rate.

Dryland mechanisms could widely control ecosystem functioning in a drier and warmer world — www.nature.com

Responses of terrestrial ecosystems to climate change have been explored in many regions worldwide. While continued drying and warming may alter process rates and deteriorate the state and performance of ecosystems, it could also lead to more fundamental changes in the mechanisms governing ecosystem functioning. Grünzweig et al. argue that climate change will induce unprecedented shifts in these mechanisms in historically wetter climatic zones, towards mechanisms currently prevalent in dry regions, which they refer to as ‘dryland mechanisms’.

Large scale genomic rearrangements in selected Arabidopsis thaliana T-DNA lines are caused by T-DNA insertion mutagenesis

Pucker et al. sequenced the genomes of 14 A. thaliana GABI-Kat T-DNA insertion lines, which eluded flanking sequence tag-based attempts to characterize their insertion loci, with Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) long reads. Complex T-DNA insertions were resolved and 11 previously unknown T-DNA loci identified, resulting in about 2 T-DNA insertions per line and suggesting that this number was previously underestimated.

Legacies at work: plant–soil–microbiome interactions underpinning agricultural sustainability — www.cell.com Agricultural intensification leaves negative legacies that influence soil microbiomes, weakening their capacity to deliver multiple soil ecosystem functions. Innovative agricultural management can create positive above- and belowground legacies that improve agricultural sustainability.

Meta-Research: How parenthood contributes to gender gaps in academia

Using data from a survey of 7,764 academics in North America and publication data from the Web of Science, Zheng et al. analyze gender differences in parenthood and academic achievements and explore the influence of work-family conflict and partner support on these gender gaps.

Careers

Senior Research Associate/Research Associate in Plant Physiology and Anatomy Applications are invited for a postdoctoral research position in plant physiology and anatomy funded for 28 months by the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship programme. You will be joining the lab of Dr Marjorie Lundgren, part of the Photosynthesis Team at the Lancaster Environment Centre.  

PhD position in the field of Quantitative Genetics (f/m/d) The Quantitative Genetics research group is interested in devising and evaluating ‘omics’-based breeding strategies to boost selection gain in (pre)breeding programs. Our model crop is wheat, but research activities also encompass barley, German chamomile, common bean, soybean, maize, rye, Arabidopsis, and canola. In the frame of a third party funded research project, we are looking for a PhD-student

International postdocs (f/m/d) for a Humboldt Research Fellowship at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf The Frommer lab has openings for Humboldt Research Fellows at the postdoc level through a fast track program since Wolf B Frommer has been selected as a Henriette Herz Scout.

Three Postdoctoral Fellowships on MSCA-COFUND Project “AGenT” The MSCA-COFUND project AGenT (Agricultural Genomics Transversal) postdoctoral programme is advertising three two-year postdoctoral positions in its second 2022 call, the third call of the programme.

PhD Student The Center for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG) is looking for a PhD Student to be part of the group Brassinosteroid signaling in plant development

PhD Position Nature-based transitions: socio-economic and legal solutions for climate-robust, sustainable and productive sandy-soil landscapes Are you passionate about Dutch landscapes, and especially how we can safeguard their sustainability in the future? Are you a social scientist with a strong interest in how we can use insights from economics and law to reconcile conflicting objectives, and design policy interventions that facilitate a sustainability transformation?Are you excited about empirical methods and interdisciplinary collaboration? Then this PhD position is the perfect fit for you!

Laboratory Technician Applications are invited for the position of Laboratory Technician in the research group of Dr. Sebastian Schornack at the Sainsbury Laboratory, Cambridge University (www.schornacklab.net).

CSIRO Postdoctoral Fellowship in Intelligent Crop Design In this position you will develop cutting-edge technologies, leveraging big datasets and machine learning to design gene editing tools and strategies that will rapidly deliver bespoke crop solutions to grain producers. In collaboration with research partners and industry (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT), CIMMYT Australia ICARDA Germplasm Evaluation (CAIGE) and Rebel Seeds), the CERC fellow will interact directly with beneficiaries of this research. Reinvention of the crop breeding process in this project will impact global food security through delivery of profitable and sustainable crops adapted to future climates. 

Principal Ecologist RSK (Ireland) Ltd, part of the RSK Group, are recruiting an experienced Ecologist to help guide and expand our ecology team. You will get the opportunity to work on an interesting and varied portfolio of projects including airports, renewable energy, flood alleviation, regeneration projects, residential.

Postdoctoral scientist (f/m/d) The research group Genomics of Genetic Resources (GGR) is hiring a postdoc in frame of the BMBF-funded project p-epBAR (barley pan-epigenome), starting in September 2022. Your research will take advantage of comprehensive barley pan-genome datasets and you will be responsible to survey epi-genetic variation related to structural genomic variation. This project is run in collaboration with the IPK research group Domestication Genomics, hence you will become a member of a fully equipped wetlab genomics and bioinformatics environment and setup.  

Assistant Professor of Biology The Frank R. Seaver College of Science and Engineering at Loyola Marymount University (LMU) invites applicants to apply for a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology. We seek to hire an innovative teacher-scholar to begin in Fall 2023. Applicants must hold a Ph.D. in Biology or closely related field, conferred no later than the position start date of August 16, 2023. Postdoctoral experience or significant equivalent training is required.

PhD position (f/m/d) The aim of this PhD project is to discover the genes of the biosynthetic pathways of ipecac alkaloids in these two distantly related medicinal plant species. Then, the pathways can be compared, contrasted, and recombined using state of the art plant-based production platforms. The PhD candidate will use cutting edge metabolomics and transcriptomics approaches to identify enzyme candidates, screen for activities, characterize active enzymes in vitro and in vivo and reconstitute both natural and synthetic pathways.

Education Officer Are you passionate about education and plant sciences? Do you want to contribute to high quality education, and are you passionate about optimizing and innovating educational activities? Then this is the perfect position for you at Wageningen University & Research!

PhD Scholarships in Plant Evolutionary Biology Applications are open for three PhD scholarships (AU$28,854/year, full time for 3.5 years) for projects at the University of Tasmania

Research Assistant (Banfield Group) The role will involve helping to manage the research performed in the Banfield Lab, working closely with the Group Leader. The successful candidate will undertake a wide range of diverse tasks including: planning, performing, trouble-shooting and analysing experiments of their own and others; working closely with other Lab members to provide training and advice on effective use of resources; ensuring best-practice in research and recording/sample management processes are followed. They will also undertake other key administrative tasks, such as maintenance of laboratory supplies and stocks, and managing laboratory equipment (including coordinating use of shared equipment and resources) – taking responsibility for purchases, maintenance and repairs as appropriate.

Assistant Director – Scientist (Geospatial – Land use) We have a vacancy in the Forest and Land Sciences Program for a geospatial scientist. The program has a strong focus on integrated spatial analysis, holds key national datasets on forests and land use, and works collaboratively with other government and research agencies to deliver its information products.

Researcher Crop Physiology As a researcher, do you want to use your passion for plant cultivation in the greenhouse horticulture sector? Do you want to investigate how, with the help of the knowledge and all the possibilities that glasshouse horticulture offers, you can get everything out of the plant for a sustainable, advanced and realized glasshouse? Then we are looking for you at Wageningen Plant Research!

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