đ± TWiB February 21, 2022
I hope you've had a good week. In the office, I've been enjoying the side-effects of Storms Dudley, Eunice and Franklin. The sudden pressure drops are making the room spin round. When combined with YouTube videos of rollercoasters, it becomes something special.
Talking of something special, this time in a positive sense, the 6th Annual Crops in silico Symposium and Hackathon has been announced for May 11-13. The virtual conference on virtual plants will be gathering real experts to exchange ideas of how to get people in plant modelling talking to each other.
Assuming Gladys and Herman don't knock me over, there'll be another collection of the top links shared by people following @BotanyOne on Twitter at the same time next week. Until then, take care.
Alun (webmaster@botany.one)
In Botany One
Can field botany be effectively taught as a distance course? â www.botany.one COVID-19 forced many academics to teach remotely; for field botany this required a complete rethink of how such a course could be taught.
Why would a plant that doesn't live in a wildfire zone need to be able to smell smoke? â www.botany.one The ability to smell smoke is important if you're expecting a fire - but some plants have altered how they use this sense to modify how they grow.
With hundreds of thousands of flowers, macadamia can be limited by not getting enough pollen â www.botany.one This study is the first to demonstrate pollen limitation in a mass-flowering tree.
Novel tree hunted by fictional Victorians â www.botany.one
Nigel Chaffey reviews "The Plant Hunter" by TL Mogford.
What does cyanobacteria look for in a good moss host? â www.botany.one Cyanobacteria can provide an important source of nitrogen for mosses, but some mosses are better at attracting them than others.
News & Views
Chinaâs approval of gene-edited crops energizes researchers Scientists say newly published guidelines will spur research into crops that have increased yields and greater resilience to climate change.
Deforestation In Brazilian Amazon Rainforest Hits Record January High â www.iflscience.com In January 2022, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon hit the highest levels for the month of January since satellite monitoring began, according to new government data.
Native grains harvest brings together culture, food and regenerative farming â www.abc.net.au A harvest of a different kind has taken place in the New South Wales north-west this week, with native millet and Mitchell grasses gathered at the University of Sydney's Narrabri Plant Breeding Institute.
Lichens are in danger of losing the evolutionary race with climate change Lichens grow everywhere, from tundras in the Arctic to the bark of the tree in your yard, and they do everything from creating oxygen to serving as food for reindeer. But a new study characterizes their preferred climates and concludes that their ability to change these climatic preferences happens slowly, over the course of millions of years. That means that these algae are likely to be impacted by rapid climate change the Earth is currently undergoingâand they might take lots of common lichens with them.
Important plants for the world in the heart of South America Scientists at Kew and their partners have been helping to identify habitats and plants that need protecting in Bolivia through the Tropical Important Plants Areas project.
How ancient plants 'learnt' to use water when they moved on to land â new research â theconversation.com In our recent paper, published in New Phytologist, we investigate, at the genetic level, how plants have learnt to use and manipulate water â from the first tiny moss-like plants to live on land in the Cambrian period (around 500 million years ago) through to the giant trees forming complex forest ecosystems of today.
Explosive fossil fruit found buried beneath ancient Indian lava flows â www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu In a recent study, scientists excavating the fossilized remains of plant material wedged between layers of volcanic rock describe a new plant species based on the presence of distinctive fruit capsules that likely exploded to disperse their seeds.
5 ways to partner with communities on forest restoration Indigenous peoples and local communities must be central to developing equitable benefit-sharing systems for forest stewardship and restoration. As more investment goes into forest conservation and restoration, social justice and equity approaches can secure long-term prosperity for forests and people. We outline five guiding principles to ensure implementers develop effective partnerships with communities.
Hall of Mosses â Forks, Washington â www.atlasobscura.com Stroll through a wonderland of stupendous moss-covered trees.Â
I am launching a civil disobedience movement against moratorium on GM crops. Here's why I respect the rule of law but today, I will plant Bt brinjal on my farm to launch the âFeed India civil disobedience movementâ. GM crops need revival.
Peer Review: Feeling like a ârealâ scientist Peer reviewing helped a graduate student to finally gain a sense of belonging within the research community.
Plant science in Encanto â frondswithbenefits.blog Investigating the botanical world of Encanto has been a real treat. Lin-Manuel Miranda did a fabulous job of taking the advice from a botanist and weaving together a song that really encapsulated the amazing plants of Colombia.
Scientific Papers
Bowles et al. show that novel genes in the first land plants led to the single origin of stomata, but the stomatal closure of seed plants resulted from later gene expansions. By contrast, the major mechanism leading to the origin of vascular tissue was cooption of genes that emerged in the first land plants, enabling continuous water transport throughout the ancestral vascular plant. In turn, new key genes in the ancestors of plants with true leaves and seed plants led to the emergence of roots and lateral roots.
The evolution of thermal performance in native and invasive populations of Mimulus guttatus
The rise of globalization has spread organisms beyond their natural range, allowing further opportunity for species to adapt to novel environments and potentially become invaders. Yet, the role of thermal niche evolution in promoting the success of invasive species remains poorly understood. Querns et al. use thermal performance curves to test hypotheses about thermal adaptation during the invasion process
Structural insights into the Venus flytrap mechanosensitive ion channel Flycatcher1 â www.nature.com
Flycatcher1 (FLYC1), a MscS homolog, has recently been identified as a candidate mechanosensitive (MS) ion channel involved in Venus flytrap prey recognition. FLYC1 is a larger protein and its sequence diverges from previously studied MscS homologs, suggesting it has unique structural features that contribute to its function. Jojoa-Cruz et al. characterize FLYC1 by cryo-electron microscopy, molecular dynamics simulations, and electrophysiology.
Plant-microbe interactions in the apoplast: Communication at the plant cell wall
Dora et al. discuss crucial processes occurring at the plant cell wall during the contact and communication between microbe and plant. They argue that these local and dynamic changes need to be considered to fully understand plant-microbe interactions.
Lebecq et al. used a root tracking system to image the spatio-temporal dynamics of both F-actin reporters and cell division markers in dividing cells embedded in their tissues. In addition to the F-actin accumulation at the phragmoplast, they observed and quantified a dynamic apico-basal enrichment of F-actin from the prophase/metaphase transition until the end of the cytokinesis.
A design optimized prime editor with expanded scope and capability in plants â www.nature.com
Prime editing, a versatile gene-editing approach that directly writes new genetic information into a specified DNA site without requiring double-strand DNA breaks, suffers from low efficiency in plants. In this study, N-terminal reverse transcriptaseâCas9 nickase fusion performed better in rice than the commonly applied C-terminal fusion. In addition, introduction of multiple-nucleotide substitutions in the reverse transcriptase template stimulated prime editing with enhanced efficiency.
ReadCube: https://rdcu.be/cHn1e
Genomes shed light on the evolution of Begonia, a megaâdiverse genus
Li et al. present chromosome-scale genome assemblies for four species of Begonia (B. loranthoides, B. masoniana, B. darthvaderiana and B. peltatifolia), and whole genome shotgun data for an additional 74 Begonia representatives to investigate lineage evolution and shade adaptation of the genus.
Old and ancient trees are life history lottery winners and vital evolutionary resources for long-term adaptive capacity â www.nature.com
Cannon et al. use a neutral stochastic model to examine tree demographic patterns that emerge over time, across a range of population sizes and empirically observed mortality rates. A small proportion of trees (~1% at 1.5% mortality) are life-history âlottery winnersâ, achieving ages >10â20Ă the median age. Ancient trees are an emergent property of forests that requires many centuries to generate. They radically change variance in generation time and population fitness, bridging centennial environmental cycles. These life-history âlotteryâ winners are vital to long-term forest adaptive capacity and provide invaluable data about environmental history and individual longevity. Old and ancient trees cannot be replaced through restoration or regeneration for many centuries. They must be protected to preserve their invaluable diversity.
ReadCube: https://rdcu.be/cHn1n
Making (remote) sense of lianas - Heijden â besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
van der Heijden et al. review progress in studying liana ecology using ground-based, airborne and space-borne remote sensing in four key areas: (i) spatial and temporal distributions, (ii) structure and biomass, (iii) responses to environmental conditions and (iv) diversity. This demonstrates the great potential of remote sensing for rapid advances in our knowledge and understanding of liana ecology. They then look ahead, to the possibilities offered by new and future advances.
Arabidopsis apoplastic fluid contains sRNA- and circular RNAâprotein complexes that are located outside extracellular vesicles â academic.oup.com
Previously, botanists have shown that apoplastic wash fluid (AWF) purified from Arabidopsis leaves contains small RNAs (sRNAs). To investigate whether these sRNAs are encapsulated inside extracellular vesicles (EVs), Karimi et al. treated EVs isolated from Arabidopsis leaves with the protease trypsin and RNase A, which should degrade RNAs located outside EVs but not those located inside. These analyses revealed that apoplastic RNAs are mostly located outside and are associated with proteins. Further analyses of these extracellular RNAs (exRNAs) revealed that they include both sRNAs and long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), including circular RNAs (circRNAs).
Accelerating Mountain Forest Dynamics in the Alps
Thom and Seidl assessed forest dynamics over 28Â years at Berchtesgaden National Park (BGNP), Germany, quantifying the spatiotemporal patterns and unraveling the drivers of forest change. They analyzed high-density forest inventory data, consisting of three consecutive censuses of 3759 permanent sample plots (132,866 tree records in total). They used semi-variograms to analyze spatial patterns of change, and boosted regression trees to quantify the effect of 30 covariates on changes in nine indicators of forest structure and composition. Over the 28Â years investigated, the forests of BGNP were becoming denser, structurally more complex, and more species rich. Changes in forest structure were more pronounced and spatially correlated on the landscape than changes in tree species composition. Change rates of all indicators increased over time, signifying an acceleration of forest dynamics since the 1980s.
The number of tree species on Earth â www.pnas.org
Cazzolla Gatti et al. estimate the number of tree species at biome, continental, and global scales. They estimated a global tree richness (â73,300) that is â14% higher than numbers known today, with most undiscovered species being rare, continentally endemic, and tropical or subtropical. These results highlight the vulnerability of global tree species diversity to anthropogenic changes.
Forest fragmentation impacts the seasonality of Amazonian evergreen canopies â www.nature.com
Nunes et al. use terrestrial LiDAR surveys every two weeks spanning wet and dry seasons in Central Amazonia to show that plant phenology varies strongly across vertical strata in old-growth forests, but is sensitive to disturbances arising from forest fragmentation. In combination with continuous microclimate measurements, they find that when maximum daily temperatures reached 35â°C in the latter part of the dry season, the upper canopy of large trees in undisturbed forests lost plant material. In contrast, the understory greened up with increased light availability driven by the upper canopy loss, alongside increases in solar radiation, even during periods of drier soil and atmospheric conditions.
ReadCube: https://rdcu.be/cHn4O
Careers
Postdoc Researcher We are looking for a highly talented and creative new team member with a strong interest in epigenetics and plant development. The postdoctoral scientist is expected to conduct innovative research to investigate the role of chromatin silencing complexes and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in controlling early seedling establishment in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Aspects of this multidisciplinary project will involve genetic, genomic, proteomic and bioimaging approaches. Applicants must be willing to apply to international fellowships (e.g. EMBO, Marie Curie).
Scientific Programmer The Talmo Lab is looking for talented software engineers to help us build computational tools to drive the next generation of scientific discovery! Work on open source software used by researchers around the world! Apply the latest in computer vision and deep learning! Directly contribute to projects aiming to combat climate change, cure cancer and understand the brain! Work in a positive, collaborative lab environment with ocean views and a ton of GPUs!
Project Assistant in Plant/ Insect Ecology We are searching for 3 project assistants for conducting lab and fieldwork in the DrivenByPollinators project in which we study the effects of pollinator decline on plant community composition and ecosystem functioning. The project assistants will be required to carry out monitoring of plant and insect communities in grassland ecosystems throughout SkÄne as well as in a complementing mesocosm experiment near Lund.
CEPLAS Summer School 2022 The IPK/CEPLAS Summer School is dedicated to PhD students and early postdoctoral researchers. Learn about the most recent developments in plant translational biodiversity research and the exciting research conducted in CEPLAS and IPK, explore science related topics in challenging workshops. You will have the opportunity to present your results to a wide scientific audience and build your professional network by engaging with early-career and internationally renowned plant scientists.
Postdoc in Plant Biology/Evo-devo (ERC ORIGINS) The recruited postdoctoral research will dissect symbiotic gene regulatory networks in the liverworts Marchantia paleacea. This includes designing and building DNA constructs for overexpression and CRISPR genome editing, genetic transformation, RNAseq, phenotyping of Marchantia paleacea mutants in response to inoculation with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. The recruited postdoc will directly supervise a research assistant and master students. The recruited postdoc will present her/his work to diverse audience through seminars (team, department, national and international conferences) and publications.
Tenure-Track Professorship for the field of Plant-Animal Interactions Applicants have a strong record in studying evolutionary patterns and processes underlying mutualistic or antagonistic plant-animal interactions and their consequences for ecological networks. We expect the successful applicant to develop a competitive research programme in the field. The University of Vienna offers excellent research conditions including well-equipped laboratories, a herbarium, a Botanical Garden, and access to a tropical research station (La Gamba, Costa Rica). The candidate is expected to teach on all academic levels.
Postdoctoral Position - Plant-beneficial Bacteria
A post-doctoral position is available in the Lundberg group at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) in Uppsala, Sweden to investigate the means by which the ubiquitous beneficial bacterial genus Sphingomonas thrives on and in plants. Although microbes are increasingly used as agricultural inoculants to improve plant health without the use of harmful chemicals, we have little understanding of how they work and how they can survive in dynamic field settings.
Associate Handling Editors for Palaeontology and Papers in Palaeontology The Editorial Board of Palaeontology and Papers in Palaeontology is seeking to expand the pool of Handling Editors to include and involve early-career researchers as Associate Handling Editors. Through this process we aim to:Â Give early-career researchers the opportunity to gain experience with editorial work in major, international journals; Increase the diversity of the Editorial Board.Â
Professor in Specialized Plant Metabolism and Plant Metabolic Engineering The department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics has a vacancy for a full-time (100%) full professor or senior full professor position, responsible for academic teaching, academic research and services in the discipline of âSpecialized Plant Metabolism and Plant Metabolic Engineeringâ.
PhD position | Alkaloid biosynthesis and evolution in medicinal plants The Department of Natural Product Biosynthesis (Prof. Dr. Sarah E. OâConnor) at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology invites highly motivated candidates to apply for a 3-year PhD position to study alkaloid biosynthesis and evolution in medicinal plants.
Post-Doctoral Research Associate The Budke Lab in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee is seeking a Post-Doctoral Research Associate for a NSF-funded project. The goal of this project is to investigate adaptations that regulate parent-offspring conflict in moss plants. The primary work of the postdoctoral researcher will be laboratory-based generation of DNA sequence data using herbarium specimens followed by bioinformatic analysis to analyze the evolution of morphological structures involved in the parent-offspring conflict. Opportunities will also be available to develop novel research questions focusing on the functional morphology, physiology, and evolution of the parent-offspring conflict in mosses.
Two Postdoctoral fellows in Plant Enzyme Evolution, Structure and Function The two postdoctoral positions are financed by the Independent Research Council and are lead by Assistant Professor Elizabeth H J Neilson. We welcome applications from scientists of all backgrounds excited about understanding the evolution, structure and function of plant proteins.
Post-doc in multiplex genome engineering of the maize yield related genes Feeding the growing world population under changing climate conditions poses an unprecedented challenge on global agriculture and our current pace to breed new high-yielding crop varieties is too low to face the imminent threats to food security. The ERC project BREEDIT, aims for an expeditious evaluation of combinations of potential yield contributing alleles by unifying âclassicalâ breeding with gene-centric molecular biology.
Assistant or Associate Professor, Forage Crop Production & Weed Management The Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Wyoming invites applications for an Assistant or Associate Professor for an academic year (9-month), tenure-stream position focused on forage crop production and weed management in forage-based cropping systems. The incumbent will be based on the main UW campus in Laramie.
Research Officer (Pulses) Job in Wagga Wagga & Riverina In your new role as Research Officer within the Southern Cropping Unit you will lead and conduct research across a number of pulse crops focussed upon improving farming systems in southern NSW. The role includes identifying and implementing innovative pulse research while working collaboratively with other existing winter crop research projects. You will be responsible for the delivery of outputs from the research for industry and the scientific community. In this role you will be leading a small technical support team and travel throughout southern and central NSW will be required.
Privacy Policy
We store your email in order to know who to send the emails to. We have to share that list with Revue because theyâre the company that actually sends the emails out. We get information about how many emails open, so it might be 50% one week, but we wouldnât be able to tell if you were in the half that opens the email or the half that didnât. Revue have their own longer privacy policy.
The email is funded by the Annals of Botany Company.