🌻 TWiB July 11, 2022
I think I've finally run out of ways not to get the translation system working on Botany One. With luck, it should start this week which will allow me to start writing again. The first test language will be Spanish. We'll be running tests for about a month and if it works as I want, we'll be restoring languages at the rate of about one a month.
The big news story this week was the new lily discovered at Kew, until a non-Botany story came to the fore in the second half of the week. If, like some people, you find yourself unexpectedly in need of a job there are quite a few posts advertised this week,
Once again the newsletter will be back with you at the same time next week, unless COVID catches me, or my keyboard melts in the heat. Until then, take care.
Alun (webmaster@botany.one)
News & Views
How Plant Pathogens Evolve And Spread With Climate Change Pandemics aren’t just for humans — they can sweep through the plant world too. As the planet warms, devastating diseases are being carried to new lands by the infrastructure of global capitalism, wreaking havoc on undefended crops and ecosystems.
Victoria Boliviana - A New Species of Giant Waterlily — www.lucytsmith.com For the past four years I have been working with horticulturalist Carlos Magdalena and a wonderful team of scientists from Kew and Bolivia to describe and name the first new species of giant waterlily in over a century.
The coming food catastrophe — www.economist.com War is tipping a fragile world towards mass hunger. Fixing that is everyone’s business
Spain and Portugal suffering driest climate for 1,200 years, research shows Effects of human-caused global heating are blocking vital winter rains, with severe implications for farming and tourism
Help Njoki to do her PhD at Uni of Manchester — www.gofundme.com
You can help Njoki Kimani an environmental science student from Kenya.
Underground carnivore: the first species of pitcher plant to dine on subterranean prey This is the first pitcher plant known to produce functional underground traps, and the first for which capture of subterranean prey has been observed.
Native seaweed research project secures substantial funding — www.rnz.co.nz A research project looking at the marine ecosystem's resilience to climate-change has secured funding for its second year.
Professors are leaving academe during the Great Resignation It remains unclear just how many professors are leaving their jobs during the Great Resignation, but stories about who is leaving, and why, abound. Will institutions be forced to respond with real change?
From data to Viz | Find the graphic you need — www.data-to-viz.com From Data to Viz leads you to the most appropriate graph for your data. It links to the code to build it and lists common caveats you should avoid.
Newly identified waterlily species is world’s largest Leaves of species grown at Kew Gardens can reach up to three metres in the wild
A milestone for the Biological Flora: 300 accounts and counting To mark the publication of our 300th Biological Flora of Britain and Ireland, the Editor, Tony Davy, reflects on the project’s progress and achievements over the past 81 years:
Scientific Papers
Recommendations for empowering early career researchers to improve research culture and practice — journals.plos.org
Early career researchers (ECRs) are important stakeholders leading efforts to catalyze systemic change in research culture and practice. Kent et al. summarize the outputs from a virtual unconventional conference (unconference), which brought together 54 invited experts from 20 countries with extensive experience in ECR initiatives designed to improve the culture and practice of science.
Pre-Columbian red pine (Pinus resinosa Ait.) fire regimes of north-central Pennsylvania, USA
Fire-dependent vegetation communities in the northeastern USA have undergone significant transitions since social and ecological disruptions associated with Euro-American colonization of North America. There is much interest, though little information available, about historical fire regimes of fire-adapted vegetation communities in the northeastern USA in pre-Columbian times (i.e., pre-1492 CE). Marschall et al. intensively investigated a red pine (Pinus resinosa Ait.)—oak (Quercus spp.) forested landscape in north-central Pennsylvania, USA, for exceptionally old red pine remnants (stumps, snags) where previous research had suggested the potential to develop fire-scar and tree-ring chronologies which extend to time periods prior to 1492.
Invasive woody plants as foci of tick-borne pathogens: eastern redcedar in the southern Great Plains
Noden et al. focused on the impact of expanding eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana; ERC) and tested two hypotheses involving relationships between habitat preferences of adult tick species in rural habitats in central Oklahoma. As the first evidence that links woody plant encroachment with important tick-borne pathogens in the continental United States, these results have important ramifications involving human and companion animal risk for encountering pathogen-infected ticks in the southern Great Plains.
Reactive oxygen species signalling in plant stress responses — www.nature.com
Recent advances in the study of ROS signalling in plants include the identification of ROS receptors and key regulatory hubs that connect ROS signalling with other important stress-response signal transduction pathways and hormones, as well as new roles for ROS in organelle-to-organelle and cell-to-cell signalling. Our understanding of how ROS are regulated in cells by balancing production, scavenging and transport has also increased. Mittler et al. discuss these promising developments and how they might be used to increase plant resilience to environmental stress.
The Social Network of TORC1 in plants
Jamsheer et al. comprehensively analyzed the interactome and phosphoproteome of the Arabidopsis TORC1 signaling network. Their analysis highlights the role of TORC1 as a central hub kinase communicating with transcriptional and translational apparatus, ribosomes, chaperones, protein kinases, metabolic enzymes, and autophagy and stress response machinery to orchestrate growth in response to the nutrient signals.
Revised Species Delimitation in the Giant Water Lily Genus Victoria (Nymphaeaceae) Confirms a New Species and Has Implications for Its Conservation — www.frontiersin.org
Reliably documenting plant diversity is necessary to protect and sustainably benefit from it. At the heart of this documentation lie species concepts and the practical methods used to delimit taxa. Here, we apply a total-evidence, iterative methodology to delimit and document species in the South American genus Victoria (Nymphaeaceae). The systematics of Victoria has thus far been poorly characterized due to difficulty in attributing species identities to biological collections. Smith et al. propose three confirmed entities as robust species, where two correspond to the currently recognized V. amazonica and V. cruziana, the third being new to science, which they describe, diagnose and name here as V. boliviana Magdalena and L. T. Sm.
Animal, Fungi, and Plant Genome Sequences Harbor Different Non-Canonical Splice Sites — www.mdpi.com
Most protein-encoding genes in eukaryotes contain introns, which are interwoven with exons. Introns need to be removed from initial transcripts in order to generate the final messenger RNA (mRNA), which can be translated into an amino acid sequence. Precise excision of introns by the spliceosome requires conserved dinucleotides, which mark the splice sites. However, there are variations of the highly conserved combination of GT at the 5′ end and AG at the 3′ end of an intron in the genome. GC-AG and AT-AC are two major non-canonical splice site combinations, which have been known for years. Recently, various minor non-canonical splice site combinations were detected with numerous dinucleotide permutations. Fret and Pucker expand systematic investigations of non-canonical splice site combinations in plants across eukaryotes by analyzing fungal and animal genome sequences.
Gent et al. describe maize (Zea mays) maternal derepression of r1 (mdr1), which encodes a DNA glycosylase with homology to Arabidopsis thaliana DEMETER and which is partially responsible for demethylation of thousands of regions in endosperm.
Altering plant water use efficiency (WUE) is a promising approach for achieving sustainable crop production in changing climate scenarios. Blankenagel et al. show that WUE can be tuned by alleles of a single gene discovered in elite maize (Zea mays) breeding material.
Careers
Science Leader - Crop Breeding The Science Leader will play an active role within and across business units and contribute to business goals through both scientific excellence and the translation of research outcomes into impact. They will have generous operating funds, and support for two three-year Postdoctoral Fellowships and two three-year Postgraduate Students top-up scholarships.
Post-doc position : Machine learning-based modelling for the prediction of complex phenotypic traits The postdoctoral fellow will perform top-down modelling approaches. She/He will use large-scale omic datasets produced in the project to predict complex phenotypic traits using machine-learning methods. Both supervised and unsupervised techniques will be deployed depending on the type of phenotypic traits to predict.
Two Post-doctoral Positions Two postdoctoral positions are available in the group of Professor Jonathan Jones on a BBSRC-funded project to investigate the non-host resistance of Solanum americanum to the potato late blight pathogen, Phytophthora infestans. Experience in plant molecular genetics and genomics, in investigating genetic variation for effector recognition using transient expression, and in evaluating genetic variation for plant disease resistance would be an advantage.
Plant Physiology is recruiting Assistant Features Editors for 2023 We are now recruiting a new cohort of Assistant Features Editors to join the Plant Physiology editorial board, replacing some of the current members who will step down from their roles with the journal at the end of 2022. This new cohort will work with the journal for 24 months beginning in January 2023.
How do plants open up? PhD Project The evolution of the adjustable stomatal pore was a major event in the development of life on land. Stomatal opening enables plants to acquire carbon dioxide for photosynthesis and growth, while closure prevents excessive plant water loss. In flowering plants, stomata open to acquire CO2 in response to signals including blue and red light, low intracellular CO2, and the plant's internal timekeeper – the circadian clock. Circadian rhythms enable plants to predict and prepare for regular environmental changes including dawn and dusk.
BSPP Small Project Fund 2022: Call for Proposals The Small Project Fund (SPF) is a new opportunity for BSPP members to get financial support for imaginative ideas. This is the first call for proposals and the BSPP welcomes proposals that seek to enrich our knowledge of plant diseases and their consequences for agriculture, forestry and the wider environment.
2 Two PhD Funded Positions in Agronomy or Botany at Julich Research Centre in Germany 2 Two PhD Fully Funded Positions in Agronomy or Botany EU Root2Resilience Project at the Julich Research Centre in Germany
Associate Professor Job in Plant Physiology at Uppsala University in Sweden
The position as Associate Professor in Biology with a specialization in Plant Physiology will be located at the Department of Organismal Biology. The Department of Organismal Biology teaches and explores the evolution, development and function on the organismal level.
PhD: Connecter la signalisation symbiotique avec la tolérance aux stress abiotiques chez les légumineuses Vous travaillerez au sein du Laboratoire des Interactions Plant-Microbes-Environnement (LIPME; UMR INRAE-CNRS) à Toulouse, dans l’équipe Mécanismes de Signalisation Symbiotique. Vous serez co-encadré.e par Nicolas Pauly (Maître de conférences, HDR) et Clare Gough (Directrice de recherche), https://www.lipme.fr/sms.
Post-Doc Position : Understanding the relationships between vascular system and bud dormancy in grafted grapevine (Com4LIFE) A 2 years post-doctoral position supported by Bordeaux Plant Sciences research program is available in UMR Ecophysiology and Grape Functional Genomics (EGFV) and UMR Biology of Fruit and Pathology (BFP) in Bordeaux, France. This post-doc position is one of 19 offered positions as part of Bordeaux University excellence BPS program, which will provide access to many scientific events and resources.
Postdoctoral Position in Plant-Microbe Interactions A fully funded postdoctoral research fellowship is available in EdeLab in the Department of Plant Sciences at the Université Laval, Quebec, Canada. The candidate will contribute to a project focused on identifying new immune receptors in canola (Brassica napus) and their role in clubroot (Plasmodiophora brassicae) resistance.
Assistant Professor in Plant Biology The Salk Institute for Biological Studies seeks applicants at the assistant professor level who study the molecular, genetic, and environmental interactions that determine the interactions of plants and other organisms or organismal communities in their biomes (e.g. microbes, fungi, animals, or other plants).
PhD student (f/m/d) The potato shoot tip viability after cryopreservation is affected by a number of stresses including mechanical wounding, cold, dehydration and the plant microbiome. The aim of the DFG funded project ‘PotEND’ (Potato – endophyte interaction in response to complex abiotic stress) is to study plant-microorganism interactions and the influence of endophytic microorganisms on the potato plant metabolism, growth and regeneration potential.
Postdoctoral Scholar in Plant Genomics We seek a postdoctoral researcher to work on a project investigating the role of network biology and quantitative genomic variation (both host and pathogen) in controlling the evolution of plant/biotic interactions across eudicots.
USGS Fellowship in Salt Marsh Conservation & Restoration This opportunity will be for a joint selection of two post-doctoral fellows who will collaborate on shared research goals. The selected fellows should have expertise in saltmarsh ecology and saltmarsh geomorphology. The fellows will collaborate with Principal Investigators specializing in coastal geomorphology to develop a decision framework for salt marsh restoration and conservation.
Plant Genetic Engineering Network Coordinator The Coordinator will play a pivotal role in building and implementing the activities of PlantGENE. Responsibilities include scheduling and organizing meetings, formation of a transformation facility consortium, developing workshops and internships for hands-on training. The Coordinator will be required to give presentations at PlantGENE member meetings and at conferences. In addition, the Coordinator will be involved in development of the PlantGENE website, training videos, and virtual workshops. Assisting with grant proposal writing will also be part of the Coordinator's responsibility to help build programs within the PlantGENE network of research and training.
Postdoctoral Scholar: Microbial Evolution in Agriculture The Burghardt Lab in the College of Agricultural Science at The Pennsylvania State University is seeking a Postdoctoral Scholar to work on the genomics and evolutionary ecology of plant-microbe interactions in agroecosystems (lianaburghardtlab.com). The postdoc will contribute to a funded NIFA grant, “Laying the Groundwork to Breed for Mutualisms: Tracking the Long-Term Adaptation of Nitrogen-Fixing Rhizobia to Alfalfa in Agricultural Fields.”
Research Technologist: Plant and Microbial Interactions The Burghardt Lab in the Plant Science Department at The Pennsylvania State University is seeking a Research Technologist to develop and manage research projects, perform lab management tasks, ensure safety compliance, mentor students and staff, and author or co-author published documents.
Postdoctoral position on Small-RNAs role in Plant-microbe interactions
The role of small RNAs in plant-microbe interactions is poorly understood. As a post doc researcher, you will investigate plant-microbe interactions with reference to small RNA in filamentous pathogen interactions with different host plants. You will study the cross kingdom transport of small RNAs between plant and filamentous pathogens. You will thus have the unique opportunity to be involved in a project in close collaboration with RNA biologists and plant pathologists. You will have the possibility to network with number of researchers from different domains and stakeholders through various seminars and events organized by SLU.
Assistant Professor in Crop Physiology, Tenure Track Within the chair group Crop Physiology, we offer an assistant professor position. The position includes teaching (45%), research (45%) and general management tasks and service to society (10%). The teaching will be in the area of crop science and crop physiology and will be at the level of BSc, MSc and PhD students.
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