🌻 TWiB June 27, 2022
This weekend I'm in an isolated cottage, looking down the valley of the Afon Dulas. It takes a bit of skill to look down, as the valley is crammed between a few tight mountains that rise up above the cottage on either side. The river disappears among the trees that escort the river banks as it rounds a bend. Closer to, the cottage's owner has planted a fantastic display of foxgloves that are trying to remain upright in the wind. A bit further in the distance, a red kite is flying backwards. I thought that was something only hummingbirds could do, but it shows what you can achieve with a strong enough wind.
I've been sorting out documentation this week. Ideally, you do this as you work - but when things get busy I tend to drop it and try to catch up later. I've found a few notes that look like good ideas, so we'll have to see if we can catch up with them once the new editors start.
I should also remind you that Annals of Botany are looking for a Social Media Secretary who'll also be working with us a little bit. The deadline is July 1, so you'll need to get your application in soon.
I'll be back home this week, so another email should be with you at the same time next week. Until then, take care.
Alun (webmaster@botany.one)
News & Views
Giant drone planting 40,000 tree pods a day in Australian Botanic Garden at Mt Annan — www.abc.net.au Giant drones are the latest weapon in an ongoing "war" against the introduced African olive tree in southern Sydney.
Iceland’s waders need a strategic forestry plan — wadertales.wordpress.com More and more trees are being planted in lowland Iceland – and further increases are planned, in part encouraged by the suggestion that this will mitigate for climate change. Forestry is potentially bad news for Whimbrel, Black-tailed Godwit and other waders that breed in open habitats, and which migrate south to Europe and Africa each autumn. Are there ways to accommodate trees while reducing the damage to internationally important populations of waders?
From hard-hit Mariupol to backyard farming in eastern Ukraine — www.fao.org Larysa starts a path as a backyard farmer to ensure her family’s food security
L.A. needs 90,000 trees to battle extreme heat. Will residents step up to plant them? — www.latimes.com In 2019, Mayor Eric Garcetti unveiled an ambitious plan to plant 90,000 trees in Los Angeles by 2021 as part of L.A.’s Green New Deal.
Today I learned you can identify plants and flowers using just your iPhone camera — www.theverge.com No app required — just take a picture
Truthful climate reporting shifts viewpoints, but only briefly, study finds Ohio State University researchers gauged responses to climate science versus scepticism and suggest facts bear repeating
Pride and STEM: Looking back on 50 years — royalsociety.org Professor Giles Oldroyd FRS share his reflections on 50 years of Pride in the UK, along with a look to the future.
Climate change is altering the chemistry of wine — knowablemagazine.org Warming, wildfires and unpredictable weather threaten to disrupt the delicate processes that underlie treasured wines. Researchers and producers are innovating to keep ahead.
Plants and Queerness Plant life is queer life. Plant life resists classification, redefines sex and reimagines ways of being. Plant life takes root underground, in the darkness, and spreads its limbs towards the light. Plant life is unshakable resilience. Plant life is perpetual growth. Plant life is a gift.
Scientific Papers
Binding of a blast fungus Zinc-finger fold effector to a hydrophobic pocket in the host exocyst subunit Exo70 modulates immune recognition in rice show the molecular basis of the association between the effector AVR-Pii of the blast fungus Maganaporthe oryzae and rice Exo70 alleles OsExo70F2 and OsExo70F3, which is sensed by the immune receptor pair Pii via an integrated RIN4/NOI domain.
Rapid biosensor development using plant hormone receptors as reprogrammable scaffolds — www.nature.com
Beltrán et al. describe an approach for the rapid engineering of biosensors using PYR1 (Pyrabactin Resistance 1), a plant abscisic acid (ABA) receptor with a malleable ligand-binding pocket and a requirement for ligand-induced heterodimerization, which facilitates the construction of sense–response functions.
The greening ashore The history of plant life, and particularly the greening ashore, is inseparably linked to the success of all life as we know it today.
Disentangling the genetic basis of rhizosphere microbiome assembly in tomato — www.nature.com
Oyserman et al. map the molecular features of the rhizosphere microbiome as quantitative traits of a diverse hybrid population of wild and domesticated tomato.
Precise Transcript Targeting by CRISPR-Csm Complexes
Colognori et al. show that the CRISPR-Csm complex, a multi-protein effector from type III CRISPR immune systems in prokaryotes, provides surgical RNA ablation of both nuclear and cytoplasmic transcripts.
Women are Credited Less in Science than are Men
There is a well-documented gap in the observed number of scientific works produced by women and men in science, with clear consequences for the retention and promotion of women in science. The gap might be a result of productivity differences, or it might be due to women’s contributions not being acknowledged. This paper finds that at least part of this gap is due to the latter: women in research teams are significantly less likely to be credited with authorship than are men.
Discovery of the first succulent bamboo (Poaceae, Bambusoideae) in a new genus from Laos’ karst areas, with a unique adaptation to seasonal drought — phytokeys.pensoft.net
A new taxon, Laobambos calcareus, described here, is extremely novel in showing the first documented case of succulence in bamboos, with its ability to seasonally vary the volume of its stem depending on the quantity of water stored.
First record of functional underground traps in a pitcher plant: Nepenthes pudica (Nepenthaceae), a new species from North Kalimantan, Borneo — phytokeys.pensoft.net
Nepenthes pudica, a new species from North Kalimantan, Indonesia, is described and illustrated. The species belongs to the N. hirsuta group (sensu Cheek and Jebb 1999) but exhibits some characters that are unique within the group or even within the genus. Above all, it produces underground, achlorophyllous shoots with well-developed, ventricose lower pitchers that form in soil cavities or directly in the soil.
Protein kinases in plant responses to drought, salt, and cold stress
Chen et al. summarize recent progress on understanding plant drought, salt, and cold stress responses, with a focus on signal perception and transduction by different protein kinases, especially sucrose nonfermenting1 (SNF1)-related protein kinases (SnRKs), mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascades, calcium-dependent protein kinases (CDPKs/CPKs), and receptor-like kinases (RLKs).
Crop phenotyping in a context of global change: What to measure and how to do it
Araus et al. address spectral and red–green–blue sensing as the most popular remote sensing approaches, alongside stable isotope composition as an example of a lab-based tool, and root phenotyping, which represents one of the frontiers for field phenotyping.
A secreted fungal effector suppresses rice immunity through host histone hypoacetylation
Chen et al. identified a secreted protein, UvSec117, from the rice false smut fungus, Ustilaginoidea virens, as a key effector that can target the rice histone deacetylase OsHDA701 and negatively regulates rice broad-spectrum resistance against rice pathogens. UvSec117 disrupts host immunity by recruiting OsHDA701 to the nucleus and enhancing OsHDA701-modulated deacetylation, thereby reducing histone H3K9 acetylation levels in rice plants and interfering with defense gene activation.
On the trail of auxin: reporters and sensors
Jedličková et al. focus on different types of auxin reporters and biosensors used to monitor auxin distribution and its dynamics, as well as auxin signaling, at the cellular and tissue levels in different plant species. They provide a brief history of each reporter and biosensor group and explain their principles and utilities.
MartĂnez-Sancho et al. quantified the impact of an extreme summer drought on the water-use efficiency and carbon sequestration of four mature Norway spruce trees. They used detailed observations of wood formation (xylogenesis) and intra-annual tree-ring properties (quantitative wood anatomy and stable carbon isotopes) combined with physiological water-stress monitoring.
Careers
Postdoc Scholar The Meineke Lab at the University of California Davis is recruiting a 1-year (with possibility of a two-year reappointment) postdoctoral researcher in the areas of urban forestry, ecology and climate change science. The successful candidate will work within a newly-funded USDA-NIFA project titled “Urban heat islands as windows into climate change and ecosystem service provisioning by street trees”.
Plant Pathology Department Head with Faculty Rank The Department Head is the lead academic and strategic officer for a department who works to recruit, mentor, and retain outstanding faculty, graduate students, and academic staff in a set of related disciplines in addition to serving as the administrative leader of departmental programs. In collaboration with college support divisions, the Department Head has responsibility for planning, fiscal management, personnel, and facilities.
Field Ecologist (Graduate) The Field Ecologist (Graduate) will work within the Conservation Planning and Science (CPS) team to support the delivery a range of conservation, ecological and research programs across its private reserves and other conservation landscapes, as guided by the Conservation Science and Planning Manager and Conservation Ecologists.
Has antimicrobial production shaped fungal endophyte diversification? This project seeks to determine if the evolution of antimicrobial production is at the heart of fungi that have diversified and invaded the endophytic niche.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Fire Risk Modelling In this position you will work across two related projects: i) an ARC Discovery Grant on the development of physics-aware machine learning models for spatially explicit fire risk forecasting in Southeast Australia’s forest regions, and ii) a research grant by the Country Fire Authority (CFA) in Victoria to provide both machine learning and process-based modelling studies on the influence of climate change on bushfire fuel loads in Victoria.
Postdoctoral scholar The Herbivory Variability Network and The Wetzel Lab at Michigan State University invite applications for a postdoc scholar to serve as a research leader and a coordinator in The Herbivory Variability Network (HerbVar).
Post Doc Research Associate We are seeking an additional postdoctoral researcher to join our interdisciplinary data science team of eight faculty and over 13 postdocs, spanning multiple research areas in ecology and evolutionary biology. As part of the modelscape consortium (https://microcollaborative.atlassian.net/l/c/XKdt1uGq), the postdoctoral researcher will work closely with one or more faculty members at the University of Wyoming: Alex Buerkle, Sarah Collins, Daniel Laughlin, Lauren Shoemaker, and Topher Weiss-Lehman.
Forage management and soil carbon storage - ALES Graduate Student Positions
We are seeking muliple graduate students to fill positions at the University of Alberta or University of Saskatchewan. The project is led by Drs. Angela Bedard-Haughn (Applied Pedology Laboratory at the University of Saskatchewan) and Cameron Carlyle (Rangeland Ecosystem Ecology Lab, University of Alberta). The project is funded by the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agricultural, Saskatchewan Cattlemen’s Association and Ducks Unlimited to investigate carbon sequestration under pasture and forage resources in Saskatchewan.
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