March 21, 2022

🌻 TWiB March 21, 2022

This week I recommend browsing through Chris Thorogood's Twitter account. He's out with Adriane Tobias in the Philippines. Adriane gave an excellent talk at the Plants People Planet Symposium. There are plenty of photos to see, and they're not all Rafflesia.

If you're looking to see what else has happened, then the usual collection of links shared by you on Twitter follows below.

I'll try to get you another newsletter of the links you share out at the same time next week, but Covid cases are rising here. This is despite us cutting back on testing, dropping the rules on masks and removing the need to self isolate if you have a positive test. It's almost as if the virus isn't paying attention to the headlines saying we're getting back to normal. So while I'll try to get it out at the same time, there's the usual proviso of assuming nothing goes wrong. Until then, take care.

Alun (webmaster@botany.one)

In Botany One

Poor acclimation to drought in subalpine forest tree seedlings — www.botany.one How do subalpine fir and Engelmann spruce seedlings respond to experimental drought when grown under field conditions?

Gene expression reveals differences between symptomatic and asymptomatic infection in tobacco — www.botany.one Different types of plant interactions with a particular pathogen are characterized by the different oxylipin profiles of the host plant.

New Leaf Database Could Help Identify Extinct Plants — www.botany.one A new database of leaves promise not only to help identify plants around us, but also to identify plants known only from fossils.

Australian animals might kill you, but the plants could cure you... — www.botany.one

Nigel Chaffey reviews Phytochemistry of Australia’s Tropical Rainforest: Medicinal potential of ancient plants by Cheryll J Williams

Soil compaction and nitrate capture — www.botany.one While lateral roots comprise the bulk of root length, axial roots function as a scaffold determining the distribution of these laterals.

News & Views

Live imaging of floral organ by No Time To Read

Arif Ashraf talks to Min Ya & Stephanie Conway about the article "Quantitative live imaging of floral organ initiation and floral meristem termination in Aquilegia"

St Helena Island's Conservation Efforts — www.thegirlfromtherock.com Conservation kick-started on St Helena Island on 11th November 1980 when Professor Quentin Cronk and Georgie Benjamin discovered what was thought to be an extinct St Helena Ebony on a cliff face. They had stopped for lunch and the sun shone brightly on a beautiful white flower.

Opening and exposing DNA A genome-wide analysis challenges a long-standing theory about how cells activate silent genes.

Ancient prairie, home to endangered bees and rare plants, may soon be razed by airport — www.nationalgeographic.com A growing group of people are fighting to save a rare Illinois prairie from imminent destruction.

5 reasons war in Ukraine is a gut punch to the global food system — www.politico.eu Ukraine is an agricultural powerhouse and the war is sending shockwaves through global markets.

Remote sensing in macroecology - British Ecological Society — www.britishecologicalsociety.org Join the Macroecology SIG for this two-day workshop to learn about remote sensing methods in macroecology and macroevolution.

How to Thrive under Stress: Stay True to Your Roots — plantae.org

Groen et al. set up a two-year field study in which we planted 20+ diverse rice varieties in wet and dry lowland conditions in the Philippines and found that stable genetic variation in molecular and hydraulic traits is correlated with higher rice fitness under drought.

How deforestation is pushing the Amazon toward a tipping point — www.washingtonpost.com Every day, deforestation brings the Amazon closer to what scientists warn will be its death, when the loss of tree cover finally pushes it past the point of no return and the world loses its greatest shield against rising temperatures.

Most of Australia’s threatened species not monitored by government, audit finds Conservation groups say ‘incredibly concerning’ report shows Coalition is failing to protect endangered wildlife

Nine ‘brain food’ tips for researchers — www.nature.com It can be hard to follow a healthy, balanced diet if you’re clocking up long hours in the lab, but doing so can make you more productive, say Jaouad Bouayed and Torsten Bohn.

Can a fire-ravaged forest of Joshua trees be restored? — knowablemagazine.org n August 2020, the Dome Fire burned more than 40,000 acres of the iconic species’ range in the Mojave Desert, leaving a graveyard of blackened trees. A massive replanting effort now underway hopes to return life to the fragile ecosystem by boosting numbers of the climate-threatened plant.

Researchers discover new species in critically imperiled ecosystem — www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu Researchers working in one of the world’s most biodiverse and threatened ecosystems have discovered a new plant species, Castela senticosa, which they recommend be designated as endangered. The plant, which grows as a small bush sheathed in an imposing layer of thorns, was found during a survey to catalog the flora of the Martín García mountain range in the Dominican Republic.

Scientific Papers

The mitotic spindle protein CKAP2 potently increases formation and stability of microtubules

Using in vitro reconstitution assays McAlear and Bechstedt show that the mitotic spindle protein Cytoskeleton-Associated Protein 2 (CKAP2) has a strong effect on nucleation of microtubules by lowering the critical tubulin concentration 100-fold. CKAP2 increases the apparent rate constant ka of microtubule growth by 50-fold and increases microtubule growth rates.

Innovation and appropriation in mycorrhizal and rhizobial Symbioses — academic.oup.com Recent breakthroughs have revealed how some key signals from pathogens and symbionts are distinguished. Once this checkpoint has been passed and a compatible symbiont is recognized, the plant coordinates the sequential development of two types of specialized structures in the host. The first serves to mediate infection, and the second, which appears later, serves as sophisticated intracellular nutrient exchange interfaces. The overlap in both the signaling pathways and downstream infection components of these symbioses reflects their evolutionary relatedness and the common requirements of these two interactions.

Trait phenology and fire seasonality co-drive seasonal variation in fire effects on tree crowns

A trait-based physical model combining buoyant plume and energy budget theories shows the seasonality of bud necrosis height may originate from temporal variation in climate, fire behaviour, and/or bud functional traits. To assess the relative importance of these drivers, Bison et al. parameterized the model with time-series data for air temperature, fireline intensity, and bud traits from Pinus contorta, Picea glauca, and Populus tremuloides.

Phylogenomic analyses highlight innovation and introgression in the continental radiations of Fagaceae across the Northern Hemisphere — www.nature.com

Zhou et al. use phylogenomic analyses of nuclear and plastid genomes to investigate the timing and pattern of major macroevolutionary events and ancient genome-wide signatures of hybridization across Fagaceae. Innovation related to seed dispersal is implicated in triggering waves of continental radiations beginning with the rapid diversification of major lineages and resulting in unparalleled transformation of forest dynamics within 15 million years following the K-Pg extinction. They detect introgression at multiple time scales, including ancient events predating the origination of genus-level diversity.

Crop wild phylorelatives (CWPs): phylogenetic distance, cytogenetic compatibility and breeding system data enable estimation of crop wild relative gene pool classification — academic.oup.com

Crop wild relatives (CWRs) remain underexploited in plant breeding programmes, mostly because of the lack of knowledge of their cross-compatibility with crops. Viruel et al. use a combination of phylogenetic distance metrics, cytogenetic compatibility data (e.g. chromosome number and ploidy) and information about breeding systems to predict interspecific cross-compatibility between crop and wild species and hence identify crop wild phylorelatives (CWPs) (i.e. CWRs that can breed with the crop). They illustrate this concept using cultivated asparagus as a model by integrating previous cross-compatibility knowledge and CWR classifications into a phylogenetic framework reconstructed using available sequence data.

Phylogenomics of the genus Glycine sheds light on polyploid evolution and life-strategy transition — www.nature.com

Polyploidy and life-strategy transitions between annuality and perenniality often occur in flowering plants. However, the evolutionary propensities of polyploids and the genetic bases of such transitions remain elusive. Zhuang et al. assembled chromosome-level genomes of representative perennial species across the genus Glycine including five diploids and a young allopolyploid, and constructed a Glycine super-pangenome framework by integrating 26 annual soybean genomes. These perennial diploids exhibit greater genome stability and possess fewer centromere repeats than the annuals.

ReadCube: https://rdcu.be/cI578

Habitat effects on reproductive phenotype, pollinator behavior, fecundity, and mating outcomes of a bumble bee–pollinated herb

Tian et al. compared phenotypes, pollinator abundance and behavior, and female fecundity and mating in two meadow populations and two forest populations of Aconitum kusnezoffii within 3 km of each other. Mating outcomes were assessed using microsatellites.

DNA methylation-free Arabidopsis reveals crucial roles of DNA methylation in regulating gene expression and development — www.nature.com

He et al. knock out all five known DNA methyltransferases in Arabidopsis, generating DNA methylation-free plants. This quintuple mutant exhibits a suite of developmental defects, unequivocally demonstrating that DNA methylation is essential for multiple aspects of plant development.

Evasion of plant immunity by microbial pathogens — www.nature.com

Wang et al. discuss current knowledge of the varied strategies microbial pathogens use to evade the complicated network of plant immunity for successful infection. In addition, they discuss how to exploit this knowledge to engineer crop resistance.

ReadCube: https://rdcu.be/cI6U5

Nicotiana rupicola sp. nov. and Nicotiana knightiana (sect. Paniculatae, Solanaceae), a new endemic and a new record for the flora of Chile — phytokeys.pensoft.net Nicotiana knightiana is recorded for the first time for the flora of Chile. A new species of Nicotiana, endemic to the coast of the Coquimbo region is described and illustrated. Molecular analysis placed the new species within the N. sect. Paniculatae, as sister to N. cordifolia, an endemic to Juan Fernandez islands. The new species can be considered critically endangered (CR) according to the IUCN categories due to its restricted and fragmented distribution, small population number, and the threat that urbanization and mining activities represent for the conservation of the biodiversity of the area.

Extracellular vesiculo-tubular structures associated with suberin deposition in plant cell walls — www.nature.com

Suberin is a fundamental plant biopolymer, found in protective tissues, such as seed coats, exodermis and endodermis of roots. Suberin is deposited in most suberizing cells in the form of lamellae just outside of the plasma membrane, below the primary cell wall. How monomeric suberin precursors, thought to be synthesized at the endoplasmic reticulum, are transported outside of the cell, for polymerization into suberin lamellae has remained obscure. Using electron-microscopy, De Bellis et al. observed large numbers of extracellular vesiculo-tubular structures (EVs) to accumulate specifically in suberizing cells, in both chemically and cryo-fixed samples.

Careers

Postdoktorand*in (w/m/d) Für unser Team suchen wir eine*n Postdoktorand*in mit Erfahrung in der Analyse von genomischen Datensätzen in Nicht-Modellarten und mit Interesse an der Arbeit mit Bäumen. Die/der Postdoktorand*in soll den Lehrstuhl in Forschung, Lehre und Administration unterstützen und hat die Möglichkeit ein eigenes Profil in der Forstgenetischen Forschung und Lehre zu etablieren. Eine Einbindung in laufende Projekte zur genomischen Charakterisierung von europäischen Waldbaumarten und zur molekularen Phänologie von tropischen Baumarten ist geplant.

Laboratory Manager As part of the Mayfield Community Ecology Lab the appointee to this position will play a pivotal role in leading and managing the overall safety and operations of the Mayfield lab. The appointee will be responsible for all aspects of the laboratory operation, including instrumentation and equipment, all administration of researchers, students and visitors, and supplies to ensure the smooth operation of the laboratory. The candidate will also oversee the development and submission of research permits for plant and insect-focused research in National Parks and state reserves as needed by members of the Mayfield lab group. 

Saving Cassava in Africa : A novel gene in a deadly virus This post is part of a collaborative team working on vector-borne plant diseases in particular plant viruses and will be based in the School of Biological Sciences in the laboratory of Professor Gary Foster and Dr Andy Bailey and working in close collaboration with research groups across Africa. 

Associate Professor in Plant Molecular Biology Applicants must demonstrate research excellence in the field of plant molecular biology, with the ability to teach our students to an exceptional standard and to fully engage in the services, citizenship and values of the University.

Professor in Plant Molecular Biology Applicants must demonstrate research excellence in the field of Plant Molecular Biology with the ability to teach our students to an exceptional standard and to fully engage in the services, citizenship and values of the University.  

Medicinal Plant Collections Research Scientist The Medicinal Plant Collections Research Scientist is responsible for coordinating and performing activities related to a) assembling a use-driven medicinal plants collection at the San Diego Botanic Garden; b) establishing a consortium of experts to advise the ongoing development of the collection; c) developing collection maintenance strategies and coordinating with partners to enable metabolite discovery; and d) establishing a publicly accessible medicinal plants garden for public education and engagement.

PhD student in Plant Biology The PhD student will pursue research aimed at understanding the molecular mechanisms enabling woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca) to adapt to drought and pathogen infection in the context of climate change. As the wild ancestor of garden strawberry, woodland strawberry is a reservoir of genetic variation potentially useful for the improvement of strawberry cultivars and other related crops.

Lecturer in Viticulture The Section of Horticulture in the School of Integrative Plant Science in CALS welcomes applications for a Lecturer in Viticulture to instruct in the V&E program. The successful applicant will benefit from Cornell’s cutting-edge research and teaching resources; interactions with top faculty in viticulture, enology and other life sciences; teaching vineyards including plantings of V. vinifera, hybrid and native grapes; and new facilities for winemaking, brewing, distillation, and fruit wine production, housed in the recently renovated Stocking Hall Food Science Building.

PhD position ‘Plant intercellular communication guiding decisions on cell identity’ We are looking for an enthusiastic and motivated PhD candidate to work on a fundamental project to study the impact of intercellular communication on plant cell identity formation. You will work with advanced microscopy and transcriptomic methods to uncover the cellular mechanisms behind this.

Research Laboratory Technician (Fixed Term) The role holder will prepare and analyse samples in support of research activities. Practical experience in laboratory technician/biological scientific research work is essential. Previous experience of plant care in a scientific environment (for example, Arabidopsis, Nicotiana, legumes) and experience with molecular biology methods would be an advantage.

Principal Ecologist The successful candidate will be an experienced leader excited to help develop the business. They will support the BD Manager and the broader team in ensuring that Wildscapes CIC is a progressive social enterprise with an excellent reputation, delivering for people, wildlife, the natural environment, and Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust. 

Post-doc position in Plant Sciences : Application of untargeted approach for the identification of new quality marker of grapes and red wines A 2 years (+1) position supported by Bordeaux Plant Science (BPS) research program is available in the UMR Ecophysiology and Grape Functional Genomics (EGFV) in Bordeaux, France.

Scientist (Postdoc) (f/m/d) At the Institute for Breeding Research on Horticultural Crops of the Julius Kuehn Institute, a junior research group will be established with the aim of promoting young academics in the field of horticulture. This junior research group, Data Analytics horticulturae (DaAnHort), will mainly deal with issues of bioinformatics, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in plant breeding and the establishment of plant analytics of volatile secondary metabolites.

Call for "Researchers at Risk Fellowship" - UKRAINE Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS) announces a call for the researchers and PhD students from Ukraine under the new programme "Researchers at Risk Fellowship".

BSA Impact Award The Botanical Society of America Impact Award recognizes a BSA member or group of members who have significantly contributed to advancing diversity, accessibility, equity, and/or inclusion in botanical scholarship, research and education. This award aims to honor an individual, group, and/or institution for their impactful work that demonstrates a commitment to building a more diverse and inclusive community of engaged scholars. This can include, but is not limited to, influencing practices and policies and/or increasing access to knowledge and resources through research, teaching or outreach.

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