Recent Posts

Opinion: Ménage-à-trois hypothesis of plastid endosymbiosis ($)

It is well established that plastids are derived from the primary endosymbiosis of an ancient cyanobacterium into a eukaryotic host cell, but this understanding does not explain all of the evidence, nor does it explain how the nascent endosymbiont evaded the host cell's defense mechanisms. Recently,…

Review: Novel consequences of bird pollination on plant mating

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Pollination is an important evolutionary process as it allows gene flow. If pollen travels long distances, the likelihood of inbreeding is reduced and fitness may be increased. Pollen dispersal can be assisted by pollinators, and although most plants are pollinated by insects, birds are also important…

Review: Can modern agriculture be sustainable? Perennial polyculture holds promise

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Most of our major food crops are annuals, started from seed each year and fully harvested to collect the seeds at the end of their short growing season. By contrast, perennial crops are longer lived, and only partially harvested, so their biomass can increase from year to year. The larger root system…

Review: Environmental regulation of intrinsic photosynthetic capacity: an integrated view ($)

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Photosynthetic capacity varies hugely within an individual over time, between individuals in different environments, and between species. Demming-Adams et al. review the processes that affect intrinsic photosynthetic capacity. Plants modulate their intrinsic photosynthetic capacity according to input…

Review: How multifaceted salicylic acid combats disease in plants and humans

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The journal BMC Biology publishes occasional Question and Answer articles, including a series on plant signals. In the latest installment of this series, Dempsey and Klessig write about the hormone salicylic acid (SA) and how it combats disease in plants and humans. The article focuses on SA in plants…

Correspondence: Discussion about the US National Academies GE crop report ($)

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A series of letters has been published in Nature Biotechnology on the topic of the US National Academies report Genetically Engineered Crops: Experiences and Prospects. From Dec 2016, US National Academies report misses the mark. In the April 2017 issue, authors of the report and others reply to the…

How to make a DNA Bracelet

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Cross-posted from Kelsey Wood with permission. Kelsey is a PhD student at U.C. Davis. How to make a DNA bracelet, from any organism and any gene! I study plant-pathogen interactions, so I chose to make a sequence from a wild tobacco gene that is important for plant defense against pathogens. What…

Launching Botany Live! for Fascination of Plants Day

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May 18th is the Fascination of Plants Day, and we want to help in this international effort to highlight the importance of plants and plant science. Therefore, we’re supporting the #BotanyLive e-event! In a nutshell, we’re asking planty folks (curious, enthusiasts, professionals) to share something…

Genomic inferences of domestication events are corroborated by written records in Brassica rapa ($)

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There are many subspecies of Brassica rapa [including turnip (subsp. rapa) pak choi (subsp. chinensis) and Chinese cabbage (subsp. pekinensis)] but the relationships between the subspecies has remained uncertain. Qi et al. sequenced 143 accessions, including some subspecies for the first time. They then…