đ± TWiB August 9, 2021
The links here are the stories I see shared by people following @BotanyOne on Twitter. That means sometimes I'll get a surprise when I miss a story and see lots of other people sharing it. I don't always understand what is getting shared or why, so the descriptions are usually modified from the web pages. Sometimes that's tricky, like this week, where I have no clue what one paper is describing. It's an example of 'the wisdom of crowds'.
Why should I be so confident in the wisdom of crowds? This week I've been in competition with many slugs in the garden, and they've been beating me comfortably.
I'll be back next week with more of the stories and papers you're sharing.
Alun (webmaster@botany.one)
In Botany One
Do flowers removed of nectar and pollen attract fewer bumblebee pollinators? â www.botany.one Do pollen thieves and nectar robbers reduce flower attractiveness to bumblebee pollinators in Impatiens oxyanthera?
Facing the sun gives seeds a brighter future â www.botany.one Sunflowers might orientate their capitulum, or flowerhead, to catch the early heat of the sun, as well as to shine more brightly in the morning.
Rising carbon dioxide concentrations are making "the worldâs most destructive toxic weed" more toxic â www.botany.one Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have gone up by a third since the mid 20th century. Parthenin concentrations in invasive Parthenium hysterophorus have gone up by a half.
The roles of melatonin in soybean drought tolerance â www.botany.one Could the exogenous application of melatonin help to improve tolerance to drought stress in crop plants?
What drives plant diversity? â www.botany.one Computer simulations confirm that plant diversity can be explained by three assumptions.
News & Views
A Plant That âCannot Dieâ Reveals Its Genetic Secrets â www.nytimes.com Events in the genome of Welwitschia have given it the ability to survive in an unforgiving desert for thousands of years.
Reflection â a much needed (and missed) aspect of academic life
Simon Leather on the importance of time.
The Youth Reforesting Puerto Rico With Soursop, Papaya, and Avocado Trees â www.atlasobscura.com Food-filled parks are replacing what Hurricane Maria destroyed.
Deforestation is leading to more infectious diseases in humans As more and more forest is cleared around the world, scientists fear that the next deadly pandemic could emerge from what lives within them.
Masters of Desert Survival, Can This Iconic Cactus Survive Wildfires? â www.nytimes.com Fires accelerated by climate change, along with invasive plants and urban sprawl, threaten the saguaros, a keystone species of the Sonoran Desert and a celebrated symbol of the Southwest.
Plants That Are Near Extinction â www.grunge.com Today, plants are also going extinct at an alarming rate. Let's talk about a handful of the plant species that are facing extinction â you might be surprised.
Peatlands worldwide are drying out, threatening to release 860 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year Peatlands, such as fens, bogs, marshes and swamps, cover just 3% of the Earthâs total land surface, yet store over one-third of the planetâs soil carbon. Thatâs more than the carbon stored in all other vegetation combined, including the worldâs forests.
Look out! A veteran fire spotter shares the view from her mountaintop perch â www.nationalgeographic.com Even in bad fire years, thereâs a rhythm to the days, writes Karen Reeves from her tower in Montana's Glacier National Park.
The Subversive, Surprising History of Curry Powder One of Indiaâs most popular gastronomic exports tells a tale of empire.
Scientific Papers
Chloroplast acquisition without the gene transfer in kleptoplastic sea slugs, Plakobranchus ocellatus Some sea slugs sequester chloroplasts from algal food in their intestinal cells and photosynthesize for months. This phenomenon, kleptoplasty, poses a question of how the chloroplast retains its activity without the algal nucleus. There have been debates on the horizontal transfer of algal genes to the animal nucleus. To settle the arguments, this study reported the genome of a kleptoplastic sea slug, Plakobranchus ocellatus, and found no evidence of photosynthetic genes encoded on the nucleus.
Mountain uplift and drainage basin formation isolated populations of Marathrum. utile and M. foeniculaceum in northern South America and created barriers to gene flow across river drainages. Sympatric species hybridize and the hybrids show the phenotype of one parental line. Bedoya et al. propose that the pattern of divergence of populations reflects the formation of river drainages, which was not complete until <4.1 Ma.
Nitrogen cycling microbiomes are structured by plant mycorrhizal associations with consequences for nitrogen oxide fluxes in forests â onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Using soils collected from temperate forests across the eastern United States, Mushinski et al. show microbial communities involved in nitrogen (N) cycling are structured, in large part, by the composition of overstory trees, leading to predictable N-cycling syndromes, with consequences for emissions of volatile nitrogen oxides to air. Trees associating with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi promote soil microbial communities with higher N-cycle potential and activity, relative to microbial communities in soils dominated by trees associating with ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi.
Live-imaging provides an atlas of cellular growth dynamics in the stamen
Silveira et al. developed a confocal time-lapse imaging method, applied here to Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), that allows full quantitative characterization of the development of stamens, the male reproductive organs. Their lineage tracing reveals the early specification of the filament and the anther.
Linking xylem network failure with leaf tissue death
Brodribb et al provide foundational evidence connecting failure in the vascular network of leaves with tissue damage caused during water stress. They observe a catastrophic sequence initiated by water column breakage under tension in leaf veins which severs local leaf tissue water supply, immediately causing acute cellular dehydration and irreversible damage.
Pole position: How plant cells polarize along the axes
Ramalho et al. explore how plant cells coordinately establish stable polarity axes aligned with the organ axes, highlighting similarities in the molecular logic used to polarize both plant and animal cells. They propose a classification system for plant cell polarity events and nomenclature guidelines. They also provide a deep phylogenetic analysis of polar proteins and discuss the evolution of polarity machineries in plants.
The degree of stigma exsertion has a major influence on self-pollination efficiency in tomato, and its improvement is essential for raising productivity and for fixing advantageous traits in cultivated tomato. To study the evolution of stigma exsertion degree in tomato, Shang et al. searched for genes associated with this trait and other aspects of flower morphology, including the lengths of anthers, styles, and ovaries.
De novo assembly, annotation, and comparative analysis of 26 diverse maize genomes As maize spread across the world, selection for local environments resulted in variation, but the impact on differences between the genome has not been quantified. By producing high-quality genomic sequences of the 26 lines used in the maize nested association mapping panel, Hufford et al. map important traits and demonstrate the diversity of maize.
Monolignol acyltransferase for lignin p-hydroxybenzoylation in Populus â www.nature.com
Zhao et al. reveal that Populus acyltransferase PHBMT1 kinetically preferentially uses p-hydroxybenzoyl-CoA to acylate syringyl lignin monomer sinapyl alcohol in vitro. Consistently, disrupting PHBMT1 in Populus via CRISPRâCas9 gene editing nearly completely depletes p-hydroxybenzoates of stem lignin; conversely, overexpression of PHBMT1 enhances stem lignin p-hydroxybenzoylation, suggesting PHBMT1 functions as a prime monolignol p-hydroxybenzoyltransferase in planta.
Role of silicon in the development of complex crystal shapes in coccolithophores
Langer et al. find that holococcoliths are formed in intracellular compartments in a similar manner to heterococcoliths. However, they show that silicon is not required for holococcolith formation and that the requirement for silicon in certain coccolithophore species relates specifically to the process of crystal morphogenesis in heterococcoliths.
Careers
Provided by UA's EcoRestore Portal.
Post-Doc position in Plant Development A 2-year post-doc position (with the possibility of extension) is available in the âHormonal signalling and developmentâ team of the Plant Reproduction and Development (RDP) laboratory (ENS Lyon, France), in the context of an HFSP-funded project in collaboration with UC Davis, DĂŒsseldorf University and the John Innes Centre.
Post-doctoral Position in Plant Evo-Devo A 2-year post-doctoral position (with possibility of extension) is available at the Plant Reproduction and Development (RDP) laboratory (ENS Lyon, France), in the framework of an ANR-funded project in collaboration with the team of Dr. François Parcy (Floral Regulators team website). The recruited person will work under the supervision of Dr. Yoan Coudert.
Agronomy and Forestry PhD Program The Lithuanian Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry (LAMMC) invites to undertake a PhD in the fields of Agronomy and Forestry. The documents are accepted till 30th August, 2021.
Full Professor and Chair of the Cell and Developmental Biology group Wageningen University & Research is looking for a full professor (0.8 - 1.0 fte) to lead the Cell and Developmental Biology group which is imbedded in the Plant Sciences Group of our University, one of the leading universities on food, health and environment worldwide.
Research Laboratory Technician (Fixed Term) The funds for this post are available for 2 years in the first instance. The position is 18.25 hours per week.
Call for Senior Editor The Trustees for The Journal of Horticultural Science & Biotechnology are seeking to recruit a Senior Editor. We seek a well-established academic with a reputation for excellence in research and communication.
Evolutionary Biology Faculty As part of a multi-year hiring initiative, the Department of Ecology & Evolution at the University of Chicago is searching for faculty in evolutionary biology using either empirical or a combination of empirical and theoretical approaches. Appointment at the rank of tenure-track assistant professor is expected, but applicants for tenured ranks will be considered.
Mechanisms of Fruit Diseases and Resistance We are seeking a self-motivated postdoctoral researcher with a strong passion and interest for root biology, genetics and interest into understanding disease resistance mechanisms in fruit trees.
Assistant Professor The Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology (E3B) at Columbia University invites applications for a tenure-track position at the Assistant Professor level.
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