đ» TWiB May 16, 2022
This week's collection of the top links shared by people following @BotanyOne on Twitter has been edited between cat naps. I need to remember to double the time budget of any project, as dealing with the translation management software has taken more time than I expected, but I'm happy it's making progress. Instead of getting to bed early, I also stopped up for the Eurovision Song Contest. Congratulations to Ukraine, I think that was the right result. I am now so tired I can't remember what word I wanted to use instead of tired.
Some people who might also be tired after a lot of work are the production office at the BSA. They have a new special issue out on Methodologies in gametophyte biology. It's rare that I see something in scifi as weird as the alternation of generations in plants.
There should be another issue with you at the same time next week, assuming I'm not even more exhausted. I knew I'd remember the word eventually.
Alun (webmaster@botany.one)
News & Views
How worried should we really be about âinsectageddonâ? Although most researchers are worried about insect decline, we should be wary of the hyperbole of impending doom
The secret world beneath our feet is mind-blowing â and the key to our planetâs future Donât dismiss soil: its unknowable wonders could ensure the survival of our species
The boy genius of botany Elvin McDonald prepares for another garden season at 85 â www.desmoinesregister.com McDonaldâs career began on his familyâs farm in dusty Balko, Oklahoma. He planted his first bean sprout at 3 and was fascinated by the poinsettia his grandmother gave him for Christmas. When she handed him a stack of signed checks, he bought naturalist books and gardening magazines.
Landrace Conservation Offers Hope in Race to Collect Crop Diversity â www.croptrust.org Crop diversity âalongside soil, water, sunshine, and hard work âis the foundation of agriculture. It keeps crops productive and nutritious, provides resilience against pests and diseases, and gives us the potential to adapt to climate change. Yet a huge amount of this diversity, including hundreds of thousands of traditional farmer varieties (often called landraces) once grown in farmersâ fields, is no longer cultivated.
Boon for blooms as UKâs dry spring keeps plant diseases at bay
RHS says queries about diseases down 45% in good sign for May blooms such as lupins and iris
Prominent researchers urge Ottawa to increase top science scholarships above poverty line â www.theglobeandmail.com Federal scholarships intended to support some of Canadaâs most accomplished graduate students in science have become so devalued by inflation that those who receive them are effectively earning below the poverty line absent any additional means of income, a coalition of senior researchers has warned.
Dr Sandra Knapp, President of the Linnean Society, elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society â www.linnean.org We are absolutely thrilled to announce that Dr Sandra (Sandy) Knapp, President of the Linnean Society and botanist at the Natural History Museum, London, has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society today.
How the No Mow May environmental movement spread â www.popsci.com Has your town or city joined the movement?
Structure of âGliding Birdâ Plant Protein Could Lead to Better Crops When pathogens attack, the NPR1 protein steps in to control a plantâs immune response. Scientists have now figured out what the protein looks like and how it works â a possible boon for agriculture.
Plants grow in lunar soil brought to Earth by Apollo astronauts â www.washingtonpost.com Plants can grow in lunar soil. They donât love it â they become stressed, and may turn purple after initially looking green â but they can still germinate in lunar soil, send roots through it, sprout leaves, get bigger and potentially be edible.
Climate change takes hold in North Carolina's ghost forests As sea levels rise and storms become more intense, scientists are racing to study the rapid loss of trees and marshland along the Outer Banks
Thailand Is Easing Weed Laws and Giving Away Cannabis Plants â www.nytimes.com The Southeast Asian country will soon allow residents to grow cannabis for medicinal use. Smoking pot recreationally still carries harsh penalties.
State-of-the-art tree health laboratory opens to help protect UK forests â www.forestresearch.gov.uk
A state-of-the-art laboratory conducting innovative research into tree pests and diseases has been officially opened Friday 13 May by Defra and the Forestry Commission, as part of National Plant Health Week.
Scientific Papers
Root penetration ability and plant growth in agroecosystems Root penetration ability is critical for plant growth and development. When roots encounter soil impedance, hormones are activated that affect cells and tissues, leading to changes in root morphology and configuration that often increase root penetration ability. Factors, such as root system architecture, root anatomic traits, rhizosphere exudation and root-induced phytohormones, influencing root penetration ability and how they affect plant performance under soil impedance were summarized. Root penetration ability affects plant capturing water and nutrients, and thus determines plant performance and productivity in adverse environments.
Biotechnology in China â regulation, investment, and delayed commercialization
Xiao and Kerr provide a systematic overview of Chinaâs regulatory regime, R&D investment and delayed commercialization decisions on biotechnology over the last 40Â years and draws some conclusions regarding the likelihood of the commercialization for major GM crops in the future.
The flying spider-monkey tree fern genome provides insights into fern evolution and arborescence â www.nature.com
Huang et al. assembled the genome of Alsophila spinulosa, known as the flying spider-monkey tree fern, onto 69 pseudochromosomes. The remarkable preservation of synteny, despite resulting from an ancient whole-genome duplication over 100 million years ago, is unprecedented in plants and probably speaks to the uniqueness of tree ferns. Their detailed investigations into stem anatomy and lignin biosynthesis shed new light on the evolution of stem formation in tree ferns.
Mesophyll conductance is unaffected by expression of Arabidopsis PIP1 aquaporins in the plasmalemma of Nicotiana â academic.oup.com
In an attempt to improve membrane permeability to CO2, and increase photosynthesis in tobacco, Clarke et al. generated transgenic lines in Nicotiana tabacum L. cv Petite Havana carrying either the Arabidopsis PIP1;2 (AtPIP1;2) or PIP1;4 (AtPIP1;4) gene driven by the constitutive dual 2x35S CMV promoter. From a collection of independent T0 transgenics, two T2 lines from each gene were characterized, with western blots confirming increased total aquaporin protein abundance in the AtPIP1;2 tobacco lines. Transient expression of AtPIP1;2-mGFP6 and AtPIP1;4-mGFP6 fusions in Nicotiana benthamiana identified that both AtPIP1;2 and AtPIP1;4 localize to the plasmalemma. Despite achieving ectopic production and correct localization, gas exchange measurements combined with carbon isotope discrimination measurements detected no increase in mesophyll conductance or CO2 assimilation rate in the tobacco lines expressing AtPIP.
What is the age of flowering plants? â academic.oup.com
Sauquet et al. clarify and distinguish among the three ages of angiosperms: the age of their divergence with acrogymnosperms (stem age); the age(s) of emergence of their unique, distinctive features including flowers (morphological age); and the age of the most recent common ancestor of all their living species (crown age). They then demonstrate, based on recent studies, that fossil-calibrated molecular dating estimates of the crown-group age of angiosperms have little to do with either the amount of molecular data or the number of internal fossil calibrations included. Instead, they argue that this age is almost entirely conditioned by its own prior distribution (typically a calibration density set by the user in Bayesian analyses). Lastly, they discuss which future discoveries or novel types of analyses are most likely to bring more definitive answers.
Structural basis of NPR1 in activating plant immunity â www.nature.com
Kumar et al. report cryo-electron microscopy and crystal structures of Arabidopsis NPR1 and its complex with the transcription factor TGA3. Cryo-electron microscopy analysis reveals that NPR1 is a bird-shaped homodimer comprising a central Broad-complex, Tramtrack and Bric-Ă -brac (BTB) domain, a BTB and carboxyterminal Kelch helix bundle, four ankyrin repeats and a disordered salicylic-acid-binding domain.
Agrobacterium expressing a type III secretion system delivers Pseudomonas effectors into plant cells to enhance transformation â www.nature.com
Agrobacterium-mediated plant transformation (AMT) is the basis of modern-day plant biotechnology. One major drawback of this technology is the recalcitrance of many plant species/varieties to Agrobacterium infection, most likely caused by elicitation of plant defense responses. Raman et al. develop a strategy to increase AMT by engineering Agrobacterium tumefaciens to express a type III secretion system (T3SS) from Pseudomonas syringae and individually deliver the P. syringae effectors AvrPto, AvrPtoB, or HopAO1 to suppress host defense responses.
Using samples from Apollo 11, 12, and 17, Paul et al. show that the terrestrial plant Arabidopsis thaliana germinates and grows in diverse lunar regoliths. However, their results show that growth is challenging; the lunar regolith plants were slow to develop and many showed severe stress morphologies. Moreover, all plants grown in lunar soils differentially expressed genes indicating ionic stresses, similar to plant reactions to salt, metal and reactive oxygen species. Therefore, although in situ lunar regoliths can be useful for plant production in lunar habitats, they are not benign substrates.
Atikinson et al. provide the first quantification of the extent to which restoration affects both the mean and variability of biodiversity outcomes, through a global meta-analysis of 83 terrestrial restoration studies. We found that, relative to unrestored (degraded) sites, restoration actions increased biodiversity by an average of 20%, while decreasing the variability of biodiversity (quantified by the coefficient of variation) by an average of 14%.
Cross-biome synthesis of source versus sink limits to tree growth
Cabon et al. examined temporal correlations between treesâ carbon uptake and woody growth by combining data on tree rings and gross primary productivity measures from 78 forests with carbon dioxide flux towers. They found weak correlations between productivity and woody growth, which responded differently to seasonal temperatures and water availability.
Methodologies in gametophyte biology The articles published in this special issue point to the scientific community's increased understanding of the importance of the gametophytic generation. After all, without gametophytes, there would be no sporophytes. Each study in and of itself is a micro-review, providing investigators with pertinent background information and historical accounts of previously employed methodologies.
Careers
Black and Indigenous Collectors in the Material and Digital Archive at the Linnean Society of London How did Black and Indigenous people shape eighteenth- and nineteenth-century knowledge? Birkbeck, University of London and the Linnean Society are pleased to announce a fully-funded doctoral award to start in Oct 2022. The successful applicant will carry out research on the Linnean Societyâs rich archives covering trans-Atlantic networks, investigating the lives of Black and Indigenous individuals crucial to the production of knowledge about the natural world during a period of colonialism and Empire. The final PhD topic will be decided by the successful applicant, in conversation with supervisors.
Research Assistant (Webster Group) The Research Assistant role will establish methods for the recombinant expression of protein complexes that perform gene expression in chloroplasts. Modern cloning toolkits developed for synthetic biology will be used to assemble multi-gene expression plasmids, and intact protein complexes will be purified for use in biochemical and cryo-EM analyses.
Kew Research Fellow - Digital Revolution We are seeking applications from promising early-career scientists with interesting, innovative, and viable research ideas for the Future Leader Fellowship.
Editor-in-Chief for Plant Biotechnology Journal The position is for an initial period of three years commencing on 1 January 2023 (although there will be a detailed handover with the current Editor-in-Chief beginning in September 2022). The initial term may be extended by mutual agreement. The Editor-in-Chief will be appointed by and report to representatives from the SEB, AAB and Wiley, and the role carries an annual honorarium.
Postdoctoral Fellow, La Jolla CA The ideal candidate will be a plant biologist who has expertise in phenotyping, genetics and plant molecular biology. Ideal candidates should be intellectually curious, highly productive, driven to uncover new and impactful biology and to apply this knowledge to the larger problem of climate change, and enjoy working in a committed and diverse team. The postdoc will join a vibrant group of molecular biologists, plant geneticists and computational biologists to work in a team that is determined to address a global problem with the power of plant biology.
Post doc Position, at the Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology
The postdoc will join an EU project within the program Forest Value to work on existing data obtained in Norway spruce breeding material for phenology, growth, wood quality and pest resistance to assess trade-offs and potentials for breeding. The same tree material has been already genotypes to conduct Genome Wide Association Studies and to develop Genomic Selection models.Â
Ph.D. position in Plant Functional Genomics The applicant student will obtain hands-on skills using advanced quantitative proteomics, biochemistry and functional genomics. The PhD applicant will learn a variety of cutting-edge techniques (e.g. hands-on training with mass spectrometry, targeted biochemistry, amongst others) and will seek to answer fundamental questions regarding how different levels of cellular regulation intersect to allow plants to grow under changing environmental conditions. It is expected that the outcomes of this project will feed into collaborative applied research efforts aimed at developing better crop varieties through genetic engineering, genome editing or advanced breeding.
PhD Farmers perceptions and response to transition to sustainable Dutch rural landscapes In this PhD position, you will look for factors that allow us to anticipate farmers reactions to particular policies. In doing so, you will be collaborating with two other PhD students, one working on the environmental dimension, the other one working on the legal/policy dimension to support this transition. Prevailing methods are interviews, surveys, analysis of existing data. Eventually, all obtained knowledge will be captured in an agent-based model that allows the rural development in response to particular (spatial) policies. Additionally, the analysis and exploration of farmers response will ultimately result in a set of guidelines for practice.
CSIRO Postdoctoral Fellowship in genetic disease resistance in oat In this position you will undertake research in preventing losses in oat production due to the impact of oat crown rust disease. Rust fungi are important pathogens of plants and display diverse complex lifestyles and epidemiology. The CERC Fellow will take a systematic approach to deliver solutions for oat rust protection suitable for Australia. You will investigate components that confer rust resistance in the genetic pool of the Australian oat breeding germplasm in context to the genetic diversity of crown rust in the country; and identify optimal combinations of genetic resistance sources and define unique opportunities for crop protection while refining resources to study this pathosystem.
Joboffer Detail: Leibniz-Institut fĂŒr Pflanzenbiochemie We are looking for a highly motivated candidate with hands-on experience in at least one of the following areas: plant-microbe interactions, metabolomics, or biochemistry of secondary metabolites. In addition, the candidate should be conversant with statistical methods, including uni- and multivariate data analyses.
PhD project: Green light signalling in plants We are looking for a motivated PhD candidate to work on an NWO-funded project to study the mechanisms underlying green light sensing in plants. The selected candidate will work in close collaboration with a postdoctoral researcher on this project. They will become a member of the Retrograde Signalling team, which is embedded in the chair group of Plant Physiology.
Postoctoral researcher (f/m/d) For our team, we are looking for a postdoctoral researcher with experience in analyzing genomic data sets in non-model species and with an interest in working with trees. The postdoctoral researcher will support the chair in research, teaching, and administration and will have the opportunity to establish his/her own profile in forest genetics research and teaching. An integration into ongoing projects on the genomic characterization of European forest tree species and on the molecular phenology of tropical tree species is planned.
PhD Position in the field of Plant Meiosis The research group âMeiosisâ is interested in the process of plant meiosis that generates genetic variation through homologous recombination that is harnessed in plant breeding. To support our team, we are looking for one highly motivated doctoral candidate in frame of the ERC-funded project MEIOBARMIX.
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