đ» TWiB Jun 13, 2022
It's been a busy week. Preparations are now in place to bring back the multilingual interface for the website. The first language to return will be Spanish, as any problems in the system are most likely to appear here. Once I'm satisfied that we have that working then the other languages will appear, probably at the rate of one every month or so, unless it turns out I've got the budget horrifically wrong.
There should also be a job advert from Annals of Botany out this week. The advert for the Social Media Secretary is ready. It'll be a part-time job for about two or three days a week. I'll be mentioning it here next week, but if you want to see it sooner, keep an eye on the @BotanyOne or @AnnBot accounts on Twitter.
I plan to be sending another email out at the same time next week, assuming COVID doesn't strike. Until then, take care.
Alun (webmaster@botany.one)
News & Views
Bug v killer cactus: Kenyan herders fight to stop a plant destroying their way of life Imported insect offers a last hope against the invasive prickly pear cactus killing off grasslands and the animals that graze them
Antagonistic interactions of plant defense compounds â phys.org A combined defense of different chemical defense substances could result in a negative interaction and mutual detoxification, according to researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in a new study, appearing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, on the wild tobacco species Nicotiana attenuata and one of its specialized herbivores.
Meet Stiltgrass, Your New Garden Adversary â www.nytimes.com Hereâs how to identify this fast-spreading invasive weed â and what to do about it, if you find it on your property.
Where the sun donât shine: How to get the most out of a shady garden â www.ocregister.com Gardening in the shade is often thought of as a Sisyphean endeavor, swimming upstream against all odds with limited plant choices and no hope for color. But that notion couldnât be further from the truth.
Research reveals the science behind this plantâs blue berries â scienmag.com On a beautiful fall day in 2019, Miranda Sinnott-Armstrong was walking down Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado when something caught her eye: a small, particularly shiny blue fruit, on a shrub known as Lantana strigocamara. While its tiny clusters of pink, yellow and orange flowers and blue berries commonly adorn the pedestrian mall in spring, city workers were ripping these common Lantanas out to prepare for the winter season.
Prickly row over âtrip hazardâ shrubs pits gardener against council â www.telegraph.co.uk An elderly horticulturalist is in a standoff with her parish council after defying a request to cut back plants outside her home following health and safety fears.
âGloriously gnarlyâ: what professional botanists plant at home Wild as some may look, botanic gardens are orderly places, where everything is planted for a reason. But home gardens are different, altogether more personal
John Kominoski: Sunlight â Functional Ecologists â functionalecologists.com In this post, John Kominoski, Associate Professor at the Institute of Environment & Department of Biological Sciences, Florida International University, USA, uses yellow on the Progress Pride Flagârepresenting âSunlightââas his inspiration for working to restore and manage the Florida Everglades!
Indigenous knowledge reveals history of fire-prone California forest â www.nature.com A collaboration between scientists and Native American tribes finds tree density in parts of the Klamath Mountains is at a record high, and at risk of serious wildfires.
Scientific Papers
Show me your ID: NLR immune receptors with integrated domains in plants
Marchal et al. first summarize our current understanding of NLR-ID activation upon effector binding, focusing on the NLR pairs Pik-1/Pik-2, RGA4/RGA5, and RRS1/RPS4, then they speculate on their potential oligomerization into resistosomes as it was recently shown for certain canonical plant NLRs.
Kawamura et al. have developed a web-based suite of tools, MarpolBase Expression (MBEX, https://marchantia.info/mbex/), where users can visualize gene expression profiles, identify differentially expressed genes, perform co-expression and functional enrichment analyses, and summarize their comprehensive output in various portable formats. Using oil body biogenesis as an example, they demonstrated that the results generated by MBEX were consistent with the published experimental evidence and also revealed a novel transcriptional network in this process.
ï»żPrimulina nana (Gesneriaceae), a new species from eastern Guangxi, China â phytokeys.pensoft.net Primulina nana C.Xiong, W.C.Chou & F.Wen, a new species of Gesneriaceae from limestone areas of Guangxi, China, is described and illustrated here. It morphologically resembles P. yangshuoensis Y.G.Wei & F.Wen in papillose leaf surface, but can be easily distinguished from the latter by noting a combination of characteristics, especially in its leaf blades, leaf blade indumentum characteristic, calyx lobes, corolla and the disc. We found only one population at the type locality, about 200 mature individuals. According to the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria (Version 3.1), the new species is provisionally assessed as Critically Endangered (CR).
Genome evolution and diversity of wild and cultivated potatoes â www.nature.com
Tang et al. assemble 44 high-quality diploid potato genomes from 24 wild and 20 cultivated accessions that are representative of Solanum section Petota, the tuber-bearing clade, as well as 2 genomes from the neighbouring section, Etuberosum. Extensive discordance of phylogenomic relationships suggests the complexity of potato evolution. They find that the potato genome substantially expanded its repertoire of disease-resistance genes when compared with closely related seed-propagated solanaceous crops, indicative of the effect of tuber-based propagation strategies on the evolution of the potato genome.
A pandemic clonal lineage of the wheat blast fungus
Latorre et al. show that a clonal lineage of the wheat blast fungus recently spread to Asia and Africa following two independent introductions from South America. Through a combination of genome analyses and laboratory experiments, they show that the decade-old blast pandemic lineage can be controlled by the Rmg8 disease resistance gene and is sensitive to strobilurin fungicides.
CLASP balances two competing cell division plane cues during leaf development â www.nature.com
Starting as small, densely packed boxes, leaf mesophyll cells expand to form an intricate mesh of interconnected cells and air spaces, the organization of which dictates the internal surface area of the leaf for light capture and gas exchange during photosynthesis. Despite their importance, little is known about the basic patterns of mesophyll cell division, and how they contribute to cell and intercellular space organization. To address this, Zhang and Ambrose tracked divisions within individual cell lineages in three dimensions over time in Arabidopsis spongy mesophyll.
Hulin and Ma investigated how manipulation of host NAD+ metabolism can be employed as a virulence strategy by pathogens. Using the pangenome of the model bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae, they conducted a structure-based similarity search for type III effectors (T3Es) with potential NADase activity from 35,000 orthogroups.
Metabolic evidence for distinct pyruvate pools inside plant mitochondria â www.nature.com
Le et al. demonstrate that feeding isolated mitochondria with uniformly labelled 13C-pyruvate and unlabelled malate enables the assessment of pyruvate contribution from different sources to intermediate production in the tricarboxylic acid cycle. Imported pyruvate was the preferred source for citrate production even when the synthesis of NAD-ME-derived pyruvate was optimized.
What /are/ mycorrhizal traits?
Chaudhary et al. propose an inclusive framework for trait-based mycorrhizal ecology aimed to stimulate scientists around the world to collect and use more mycorrhizal trait data, particularly in understudied areas. This would widen our understanding regarding the ecological role of mycorrhizal symbioses at individual, species, community, and ecosystem scales.
Organic acids and glucose prime late-stage fungal biotrophy in maize Some fungi depend on their living hosts for sustenance. The corn smut fungus Ustilago maydis can grow independently but depends on the host maize plant to reproduce. Kretschmer et al. analyzed which host nutrients are required to support this obligate biotrophâs lifestyle.
Careers
Staff Writer â Central Africa The full-time staff writer position is expected to produce at least an average of eight news stories per month about conservation and environmental issues in Central Africa, published in English or French.
University of Adelaide Research Scholarship â Re-purposing shelved 'antibiotics' in the search for new herbicides The multidisciplinary PhD project will integrate innovative approaches in biochemistry, molecular biology and plant biology. The successful candidate will be an integral part of the team of researchers involved in this project and will be expected to collaborate closely with colleagues at the University of Adelaide.
University of Auckland Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Plant Molecular Science Te Kura MÄtauranga Kiora/The School of Biological Sciences (SBS) is seeking to appoint a permanent, full-time Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Plant Molecular Science to build research capacities and support our postgraduate and undergraduate programmes in plant molecular science and related disciplines.
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.
Postdoctoral Associate - Bart Lab The Bart lab at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center is seeking a graduating PhD student or postdoc to fill a postdoctoral position. Research will focus on understanding plant-pathogen interactions within the context of variable environmental conditions.
Postdoctoral position in GROW FLAT: The biophysical basis of flat organ morphogenesis from fluctuating cellular growth An NSF-funded postdoctoral position is available in Dr. Adrienne Roederâs group at Cornell University to research how Arabidopsis leaves grow to form flat laminar surfaces.
Postdoctoral Research Associate This position is in the Department of Plant Pathology. The position will involve studying races of the Columbia root-knot nematode and plant immune responses to nematode infections at the molecular level, with a focus on novel M. chitwoodi effectors.
Post Doctoral Researcher, Caplan Lab The Caplan Lab is seeking qualified candidate for a postdoctoral position focused on the function of chloroplast stromules in intracellular and cell-to-cell signaling. The individual would be part of a research group that focuses on microscopy-based approaches to understand the role of dynamic organelle morphology and movement during plant innate immunity.
Postdoctoral Research Associate The postdoctoral position, in the Harper lab at WSU-IAREC, is focused on the study of systemically infecting virus and virus-like pathogens affecting tree fruit in the Pacific Northwest. The incumbent will be expected to carry out a combination of field, greenhouse, and lab-based studies to understand pathogenicity of Little cherry virus-2 and the X-disease phytoplasma affecting stonefruit in the Pacific Northwest, so experience in plant host interactions, and testing putative effectors is a plus
Curator of Natural Sciences (Botany) The Curator of Natural Sciences (Botany) will play a central role in the research, management and development of the Herbarium collection, with a particular focus on, though not limited to, the flora of Ireland. While expertise in any area of botany will be welcomed, knowledge of bryophytes and lichens would be an added advantage since these groups are less well studied.
Research fellowship in the field of Biotechnology available within the project âTRACE-RICE - Tracing rice and valorizing side streams along mediterranean blockchainâ Instituto de Biologia Experimental e TecnolĂłgica (iBET), Oeiras, Portugal, invites applications for a research fellowship in the field of Biotechnology available within the project âTRACE-RICE â Tracing rice and valorizing side streams along mediterranean blockchainâ, Ref. 1934 funded by PRIMA Programme â Horizon 2020, the European Unionâs Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, in the following conditions: Scientific Area: Biology, Biotechnology, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Agronomy, Food Chemistry.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow â careers.utas.edu.au The Postdoctoral Research Fellow will undertake research as part of a project funded by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Plant Success in Nature and Agriculture, at the University of Tasmania node. The candidate will contribute to a key project within the Centre led by Chief Investigator Prof. Steven Smith and Prof. Michael Charleston
Computational Biologist (Contractor) We have an open contractor position for a computational biologist who will leverage data driven methods for gene discovery and gene target characterization in plant crop species. This role will work with other members of the genomics team to play a key part in gaining insight from large genomic and phenotypic data sets.
Senior Ecologists Due to a burgeoning workload, we are now looking to fill one or more senior positions. Candidates will be expected to have several years of quality experience in the sector and can enjoy high degree of autonomy on project management, surveys, report writing and client liaison. A high standard of field skills in one or more of botany, ornithology, invertebrates or protected species is anticipated as well as demonstration of a high-standard of written outputs, data assimilation, responsibility and client care.
PhD student in modulating the maize growth regulatory network to achieve climate resilient crops The selected candidate will identify and validate cell-type-specific regulatory elements and simultaneously modulate key network modules in the network. The potential use of the network engineering towards climate-resilient crops will be evaluated by phenotyping under well-watered and water-deficit conditions, as well as in field trials.
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.
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