đ» TWiB July 4, 2022
The news this week has been dominated by the Supreme Court Rulings from the USA. It's a reminder that more people that can discuss science is something that benefits all society.
I'm hoping to pick up the productivity shortly, as our two new editors should be starting soon. I've also picked up a story that I'm pretty excited about. The science I get most excited about is the stuff that I could have done myself - if I'd been clever enough to think of the idea.
I don't think that will be ready to come out next week, so at the moment I've no idea what I'll be sending out in the newsletter. However, unless COVID strikes, it'll be with you at the same time next week. Until then, take care.
Alun (webmaster@botany.one)
News & Views
Rare plant species found in western Himalayan region for first time â indianexpress.com The discovery was part of a project study of insectivorous plants in Uttarakhand.
Britain ranks bottom in Europe for nature connectedness | Access to green space Out of 14 nations surveyed, UK citizens measured lowest for their oneness with the natural world
Boosting sustainability in insurance by harnessing the value of mangrove forests â www.manilatimes.net We, in the insurance industry, are in the business of risk and we better take note not only of the elevated amount of risk, but of measures we can take or adopt that may help mitigate the risk itself or the damage that may result from the occurrence of such risk.
Scientists find a way to grow plants in complete darkness âImagine someday giant vessels growing tomato plants in the dark and on Marsâ
9 Invasive Plants You Should Rip to Shreds Sometimes we have to kill parts of nature to protect the rest of it.
DroneSeed uses swarms of drones to reseed forests after devastating wildfires â www.cnbc.com Historically, fires would leave seeds in the soil and at treetops, but the hotter, more intense fires that occur now burn up the treetops and destroy the seeds in the soil, so there is much less natural regeneration. DroneSeed is a Seattle-based startup that claims it can begin to restore thousands of acres of wildfire-ravaged land just 30 days after the fire is out.
Do we need a new theory of evolution? | Evolution | The Guardian A new wave of scientists argues that mainstream evolutionary theory needs an urgent overhaul. Their opponents have dismissed them as misguided careerists â and the conflict may determine the future of biology
The Many Uses of CRISPR: Scientists Tell All â www.nytimes.com What do infectious diseases, T-cells, tomatoes, heart failure, sickle cell anemia and sorghum harvests have in common?
New map of ancient trees an opportunity for conservation â www.bbc.co.uk A new map shows there could be around two million trees with exceptional environmental and cultural value previously unrecorded in England. That's ten times as many as currently on official records.
The fight to save vanishing wildflower meadows As he stands in a wildflower field in Fife surrounded by a riot of colour, Alistair Whyte delivers a grim warning. He cites statistics suggesting that the UK has lost 97% of its wildflower meadows over the past 100 years and warns that we could lose the rest.
Carnivorous plant that traps prey underground is the 1st of its kind to be discovered Scientists have discovered a carnivorous plant that grows prey-trapping contraptions underground, feeding off subterranean creatures such as worms, larvae and beetles.
A drought-induced lawn removal made him a California native plant fanatic â www.latimes.com For Georg Kochi, tearing out his Koreatown lawn has been as much about spiritual growth as water conservation â a deep and sometimes playful exploration into habitat, rebirth and decay on the property where he lived as a boy and returned decades later as a retiree.
Climate Change Is Shifting How Plants Evolve. Seed Banks May Have to Adapt, Too â gizmodo.com Seed banks are critical for preserving biodiversity and ensuring we'll have food for the future. But they're running up against a rapidly changing world.
Scientific Papers
Ecological complexity and the biosphere: the next 30 years
Using a 30-year window, Solé and Levin explore recent approaches to sense, preserve and restore ecosystem resilience as well as a number of proposed interventions (from afforestation to bioengineering) directed to mitigate or reverse ecosystem collapse. The year 2050 is taken as a representative future horizon that combines a time scale where deep ecological changes will occur and proposed solutions might be effective.
Increasing the resilience of plant immunity to a warming climate | Nature â www.nature.com
Kim et al. show that suppression of SA production in Arabidopsis thaliana at 28â°C is independent of PHYTOCHROME B8,9 (phyB) and EARLY FLOWERING 310 (ELF3), which regulate thermo-responsive plant growth and development. Instead, they found that formation of GUANYLATE BINDING PROTEIN-LIKE 3 (GBPL3) defence-activated biomolecular condensates11 (GDACs) was reduced at the higher growth temperature.
Structures and mechanism of the plant PIN-FORMED auxin transporter
Hum et al. present biophysical analysis together with three structures of Arabidopsis thaliana PIN8: two outward-facing conformations with and without auxin, and one inward-facing conformation bound to the herbicide naphthylphthalamic acid. The structure forms a homodimer, with each monomer divided into a transport and scaffold domain with a clearly defined auxin binding site.
CRISPRi-based circuits for genetic computation in plants
Synthetic gene circuits can enable new cellular behaviours by integrating multiple input signals into customisable genetic programs. However, gene circuit development in plants has been limited by a lack of orthogonal and modular parts required for their construction. Khan et al. present a tool-kit of reversible CRISPRi-based gene circuits for use in plants.
Long-term woodland restoration on lowland farmland through passive rewilding (2021) â journals.plos.org
Natural succession of vegetation on abandoned farmland provides opportunities for passive rewilding to re-establish native woodlands, but in Western Europe the patterns and outcomes of vegetation colonisation are poorly known. Broughton et al. combine time series of field surveys and remote sensing (lidar and photogrammetry) to study woodland development on two farmland fields in England over 24 and 59 years respectively: the New Wilderness (2.1 ha) abandoned in 1996, and the Old Wilderness (3.9 ha) abandoned in 1961, both adjacent to ancient woodland.
Improved wood species identification based on multi-view imagery of the three anatomical planes
da Silva et al. introduce a new image dataset containing microscopic images of the three main anatomical sections of 77 Congolese wood species. A dedicated multi-view image classification method is developed and obtains an accuracy (computed using the naive but common approach) of 95%, outperforming the single-view methods by a large margin.
Reactive oxygen species signalling in plant stress responses â 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. Mittler et al. discuss these promising developments and how they might be used to increase plant resilience to environmental stress.
Tu et al. present an accurate, high-throughput, cost-effective, and non-destructive method for screening variety genuineness that uses seed phenotype data with machine learning to distinguish between genetically and phenotypically similar seed varieties.
Identification of autophagic protein cargo in plants in autophagy related genes (ATG) mutants is complicated by changes in protein synthesis and protein degradation. To detect autophagic cargo, Li et al. measured protein degradation rate in shoots and roots of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) atg5 and atg11 mutants.
Fouracre and Harrison review developmental genetic studies of apical regulators and speculate on their likely evolutionary history.
Careers
Senior Research Technician The post-holder will provide specialist technical assistance to Prof. Daniel Gibbsâ research team. They will make a significant contribution to research in the lab that seeks to investigate how plants use targeted degradation of the proteins in their cells as a mechanism for sensing and responding to signals. The post holder should be conversant with a range of molecular biology, genetics, and protein biochemistry techniques and will be expected to work independently using their own skill and judgement to solve problems within their area of expertise/defined work environment.
Our Shared Future: Life on a Sustainable Planet the Smithsonian is launching two new fellowship programs: Smithsonian Climate Change Fellowship and Smithsonian Environmental Justice Fellowship. Each program will support a cohort of 2-5 fellows for a period of two years. Fellows will receive a stipend to conduct independent research that utilizes Smithsonian resources (e.g., data, facilities, expertise). Fellows with research projects that have the potential to produce rapid results and impact are especially encouraged to apply.
22 Doctoral Researchers / PhD positions (f/m/d) â âPlant Ecological Geneticsâ The University of Cologne is one of the largest and most research-intensive universities in Germany, offering a wide range of subjects. With its six faculties and its interfaculty centres, it offers a broad spectrum of scientific disciplines and internationally outstanding profile areas, supported by the administration with its services.
Research Associate (m/f/d) â Postdoc Wood Materials Science For the research area of Wood Materials Science, whose activities are addressing mechanisms and processes at different hierarchical levels of wooden substrates and products, we are seeking a Research Associate (m/f/d) â Postdoc Wood Materials Science
Tenure Track Bacterial Plant Pathogens This new member of the team at the Laboratory of Phytopathology is a scientist with expertise in bacterial plant pathogens, and has a strong motivation to establish a multidisciplinary bacterial research program. The candidate will be placed in a Tenure Track trajectory and should fulfill the requirements established by Wageningen University for this position concerning scientific publications, project acquisition, and educational activities.
Learning & Engagement Lead This role will lead on the development, management and delivery of an engaging and inspiring Learning and Engagement Programme for the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (BIFoR), with a key focus on engaging secondary schools. The post holder will develop, manage and co-ordinate a range of learning resources highlighting BIFoR activity and demonstrating best practice and innovation in learning.Â
Senior Research Associate, Product Discovery Lead Advancement (Contractor) Innovative foods at Pairwise start with the Product Discovery team where gene leads are identified and enter the editing pipeline. Genes and edits are our raw material, and your skills will push the right leads forward.
Associate Prof Plant Physiology
The Faculty of Biology and Medicine (FBM) of the University of Lausanne is inviting applications for position of: Associate Professor at the Department of Plant Molecular Biology. The successful candidate is expected to develop an internationally recognized research program and to obtain competitive grants from external sources.
PhD on the role of the plant circadian clock in latitudinal adaptation The lab of Prof. Devang Mehta conducts research in experimental plant systems biology in the Division of Crop Biotechnics (Department of Biosystems) at KU Leuven (Belgium). We have an open full-time PhD position in Bioscience Engineering to study and engineer the plant circadian clock for enhanced latitudinal adaptation.
The Ecosystems Analysis Team helps JNCCâs stakeholders meet the challenges of managing our environment and the benefits it provides. The team is inter-disciplinary, bringing together skills in citizen science monitoring, rapid analysis and model deployment, and earth observation applications.
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.
Postdoctoral Researcher in plant temperature sensing (f,m,d) The scientist will be part of the research group âTemperature sensing in plantsâ. Our group is interested to understand the molecular mechanisms of temperature perception in plants. This knowledge will help us to contribute to the breeding of climate resilient crops.
Lecturer / Senior Lecturer The School of Ecosystem and Forest Science seeks to appoint an outstanding academic in the discipline of quantitative ecology at either Level B (Lecturer) or Level C (Senior Lecturer).
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