Entries by Mary Williams

Plant Science Research Weekly: May 17th

Reflections on Classics: Plant Cell‘s 30th anniversary “The 1980s were an exciting and revolutionary time for biology, and plant molecular biology in particular,” begins an editorial by Bob Goldberg, Brian Larkins, and Ralph Quatrano, the three Founding Editors of The Plant Cell. They describe why the American Society of Plant Physiologists (ASPP; later, ASPB) felt […]

Linking CRISPR-Cas9 interference in cassava to the evolution of editing-resistant geminiviruses (Genome Biol)

CRISPR/Cas9 is a promising gene editing tool that has already been successfully used to modify many plant genes. In these applications, the gene editing machinery is transiently employed to make a stable genomic change which is then passed on to the progeny. A different application is to use CRISPR/Cas9 for defense against viruses; after all, […]

Plant Science Research Weekly: May 10th

Durum wheat genome highlights past domestication signatures and future improvement targets Durum wheat cultivar Svevo (Triticum turgidum L. ssp. durum) is a cereal crop predominantly grown for pasta production. It is the result of multiple rounds of domestication, originally deriving from wild emmer wheat from the Fertile Crescent approximately 10,000 years ago. Here, Maccaferri et […]

Maximizing the signal, decreasing the noise, Part 2: Skills for speaking and designing clearly

Maximizing the signal, decreasing the noise, Part 2: Skills for speaking and designing clearly Recorded April 2019  About This Webinar In part 1 of the webinar, Professor Tobias Baskin introduced a philosophy for writing clearly based on recognizing that our words are read. In part 2, he extends that philosophy to speaking and designing. Your […]

Review: Jasmonate signalling in carnivorous plants: Copycat of plant defence mechanisms (J Exp Bot)

Carnivorous plants are one of the easiest ways to demonstrate to children that “plants are cool too”. In their new review, Pavlovič and Mithöfer show that carnivorous plants can also be a gateway to introduce the subject of how plants defend themselves against herbivory, by drawing  links between herbivory and carnivory. For example, glandular trichomes […]

Cold-adapted protein kinases and thylakoid remodeling impact energy distribution in an Antarctic psychrophile (Plant Phys)

“Earth is a cold place with 80% of its biosphere permanently below 5°C,” begins this study of an Antarctic psychrophile (“cold-lover”). As Szyszka-Mroz et al. indicate, the permanently cold-adapted inhabitants of permanently frozen lakes are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, as well as providing interesting insights into how life occurs at near-freezing […]