Perspective: How should the advancement of large language models affect the practice of science? In this thought-provoking Perspective, four sets of authors express their opinions about the use of Large Language Models (such as ChatGPT) in the practice of science. Each essay is well reasoned, and each identifies both strengths and limitations of LLMs. There’s […]
For more than a hundred years, plant biologists have been fascinated by how plants sense and respond to environments that are spatially and temporally heterogenous. Many of these responses occur through the remarkable developmental plasticity of plant growth, such as phototropism and photomorphogenesis. Below ground, root growth and branching patterns as well as root hair […]
Perspective: How should the advancement of large language models affect the practice of science? In this thought-provoking Perspective, four sets of authors express their opinions about the use of Large Language Models (such as ChatGPT) in the practice of science. Each essay is well reasoned, and each identifies both strengths and limitations of LLMs. There’s […]
Imagine you’re on a quest to deliver a package, racing against the competition. How do you prepare? Pollen grains and the pollen tubes that they form are essentially package-delivery systems. Their purpose is to deliver genetic information (sperm cell nuclei) to the ovule. Once the task is completed, the pollen cell itself becomes obsolete. A […]
The heat shock response, a rapid transcriptional response to heat, was first observed nearly 60 years ago, and has long been a paradigm for understanding gene responses to exogenous cues. The family of genes encoding heat shock factors (HSFs) is greatly expanded in plants. These HSFs serve as key regulators of the heat shock response, […]
Due to anthropomorphic global warming, 2024 was the first year during which the global mean temperature was more than 1.5° above pre-industrial levels. Clearly, understanding how high temperatures affect plant physiology is an urgent priority. In this new study, Zhang et al. did a multi-parameter study of the model C4 plant Setaria viridis. They grew two populations […]
It’s 2025, and although we live in a world saturated with information, is increasingly difficult to sort fact from propaganda or fiction. This is true in all arenas, including plant science. Calls for strategies to improve crop yields are sometimes met with criticisms that higher yielding crops would only serve “big ag” or further harm […]
For living organisms, proper control of element location is just as important as the control of enzyme location, but harder to study. A new study by Ramakrishna et al. uses an exciting new technology, cryo nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry ion microprobe, to investigate elemental distribution (measured by their major isotopes) in Arabidopsis and rice […]
Domesticated plants and animals are remarkable human achievements but were achieved with rather blunt instruments. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that some of the genes and alleles that passed through the population bottlenecks and artificial selection process are deleterious. Glaus et al. looked at several tomato wild species, land races, and […]