đ± TWiB May 17, 2021
This is the first edition of the newsletter where I haven't had help from Nuzzel to find and rank links. Instead, I'm using a soup of three different systems that don't work with each other. I'm hoping to get things working more smoothly with time.
I've altered the organisation back to Botany One, News & Views, Scientific Papers, and Careers. This is because the new set-up is producing a lot more links, but it's difficult to say they were popular on a specific day.
I'll be back next week, with more of the links you've been sharing. Until then, take care.
Alun (webmaster@botany.one)
Botany One
Historical migration and taxonomy of the Korean endemic shrub Lespedeza maritima â www.botany.one Jin et al. use molecular analyses and morphological examination to understand the evolutionary divergence and establishment patterns of a Korean endemic shrub.
The way humans introduced Australian acacias led to the rise of the worst invasive trees â www.botany.one Botanists collated genetic data from 51 different genetic studies on Acacia species to compare genetic diversity between native and invasive populations.
The teardrop explodes, and spreads Orixa japonica â www.botany.one Video captures how an Asian plant catapults its seeds away from the parent
The economic spectrum of plant carbohydrate storage is blurred â www.botany.one The study implies that the generally overlooked role of storage within the plant economic spectrum represents an important dimension of plant strategy.
Tropical islands lead to more diversity in Palm sexual reproduction â www.botany.one Isolation and sexual adaptability contributed to the evolution of thousands of palm species.
News and Views
Spending more time in nature is good for you; here is why. â theplanet.substack.com In the late afternoon, I felt tired. Today had been a long day, and I wasn't happy with the still unanswered emails in my inbox. Instead of an extra push of work behind my desk, I left my computer, got on my bicycle, and went to a nearby park.Â
Trafficking of banned Myanmar teak lands German company with $4m fine According to the EIA, demand for Myanmar teakwood contributed to the Southeast Asian country losing a Belgium-size area of forest between 2001 and 2018
Thereâs no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically)
The common ancestor of a maple and a mulberry tree was not a tree.
The common ancestor of a stinging nettle and a strawberry plant was a tree.
And this is true for most trees or non-trees that you can think of.
Beat the blues with blue spaces Jazz Austin, Policy Officer (Water) at RSPB, discusses the importance of our freshwater and coastal habitats for our physical and mental health & well-being, and shares some top tips for making the most of our blue spaces.
Baobab Tree Pallimunai â Mannar, Sri Lanka - Atlas Obscura The trunk of this 700-year-old tree measures more than 60 feet around, making it the oldest and largest baobab in Sri Lanka.Â
The 50 beautiful Australian plants at greatest risk of extinction â and how to save them â theconversation.com As far as odds go, things donât look promising for the slender-nerved acacia (Acacia leptoneura), a spiky plant with classic yellow-ball wattle flowers. With most of its habitat in Western Australiaâs wheat belt cleared for agriculture, it was considered extinct for more than 160 years.
A brilliant botanist who believed she had identified a new species of plant but died before she could prove her theory has had it named in her honour 25 years later.
The Edinburgh Journal of Botany adds that the paper describing Rose Clement's discovery is published at https://doi.org/10.24823/EJB.2021.331 where it's Open Access.
Peer Review: Implementing a "publish, then review" model of publishing | eLife From July 2021 eLife will only review manuscripts already published as preprints, and will focus its editorial process on producing public reviews to be posted alongside the preprints.
5 key themes for the sustainable use of wild plants | Kew Many wild plant species are at risk in the Andean region and there is an urgent need to engage local communities, recognize the importance of wild plant use, and increase international collaboration.
Nature abstracts have been fed into an AI Text Generator. Can you guess which abstract is genuine and which is fake when presented with a pair?
Scientific Papers
Enabling sustainable agriculture through understanding and enhancement of microbiomes Harnessing plantâassociated microbiomes offers an invaluable strategy to help agricultural production become more sustainable while also meeting growing demands for food, feed and fiber.
O auxin, where art thou? â www.nature.com
In a feat of protein engineering alchemy, a FRET biosensor for tryptophan has been engineered into a direct biosensor for auxin, after a determined journey of over 2,800 steps to switch to a sensitivity appropriate for a plant hormone. ReadCube link: https://rdcu.be/ckjfJ
By combining bibliometric data with trait-based approaches and using a well-studied alpine flora as a case study, Adamo et al. demonstrate that morphological and colour traits, as well as range size, have significantly more impact on species choice for wild flowering plants than traits related to ecology and rarity.
Bréchet et al. designed a new flexible stem chamber system for continuously measuring greenhouse gas fluxes in a French Guianese rainforest. They describe this new system, which is connected to an automated soil greenhouse gas flux system, and discuss measurement uncertainty and potential error sources.
The ZAR1 resistosome is a calcium-permeable channel triggering plant immune signaling
Nucleotide-binding, leucine-rich repeat receptors (NLRs) are major immune receptors in plants and animals. Upon activation, the Arabidopsis NLR protein ZAR1 forms a pentameric resistosome in vitro and triggers immune responses and cell death in plants. In this study, Bi et al. employed single-molecule imaging to show that the activated ZAR1 protein can form pentameric complexes in the plasma membrane.
25 Years of Trends in Plant Science: We Should All Be Plant Worshippers Thinking back to the beginnings of Trends in Plant Science, the journal has more than stood its ground compared with its older siblings and is now consistently scoring in the top three of most downloaded journals in the Trends series. This gives me hope that the number of plant worshippers is growing and maybe in 25 years from now plant blindness will be a thing of the past.
Molecular insights into the complex mechanics of plant epidermal cell walls Layers of intertwined fibers make up plant cell walls. The various types of fibers respond differently to deformation. Cellulose microfibrils, for example, can stretch or curve, changing their end-to-end length, and can also slide past each other, reorient relative directions, and bundle with neighboring microfibrils. Zhang et al. developed a computational model based on observations of onion skin epidermis that describes how these complex changes in space govern cell wall mechanics
Hughes et al. explored the relationships between Clade III CRFs and oxidative stress. Transcriptomic responses to oxidative stress were determined in two Clade III transcription factors, Arabidopsis AtCRF5 and tomato SlCRF5. AtCRF5 was required for regulated expression of >240 genes that are involved in oxidative stress response.
Steering the soil microbiome by repeated litter addition â besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Veen et al. study effects of repeated litter additions on soil microbial community structure and functioning.
Spatial configuration and plant phenotypic plasticity contribute to increased light capture in relay intercropping, but there is little information on whether these factors also increase light capture in simultaneous intercropping. Li et al. developed and validated a three-dimensional functionalâstructural plant model to simulate light capture in maize and soybean sole crops and intercrop scenarios, using species traits observed in sole crops and intercrops.
Careers
Plant Transformation Research Scientist in Austin, TX for University of Texas at Austin The Juenger lab in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Texas at Austin is seeking a plant transformation research scientist. The position will be involved in ongoing DOE funded research exploring the genetic basis of abiotic stress tolerance, growth architecture, and biofuel characteristics of perennial grasses including switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) and Hallâs panicgrass (Panicum hallii).Â
How Do Post Translational Modifications enable adaptive responses in plants at Durham University, UK. In this project, you will be working on an emerging protein modification system called SUMO. You will be trained in the latest omics technologies such as proteomics, single cell transcriptomics and light sheet bioimaging to understand how environmental signals enable the cellular machinery to add or remove SUMO from target proteins, and thus rapidly alter their function. You will also be trained in computational biology to analyse these data types. You will be trained in coding, data visualisation and machine learning, with a view to the discovery of the functional consequences of SUMOylation that are intrinsically associated with desirable traits in plants.
Assistant Professor, Terrestrial ecosystem ecology in Logan, Utah
The Department of Wildland Resources and USU Ecology Center at Utah State University are seeking applications for a full-time 9-month tenure-track Assistant Professor position in terrestrial ecosystem ecology. The position consists of 50% research, 40% teaching, and 10% service, to start August 1, 2022.
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