Half of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Frances Arnold “for the directed evolution of enzymes”. Essentially, this involves modifying an enzyme and screening its properties repeatedly to develop an enzyme with novel attributes. Engqvist and Rabe review this powerful method and its application to plant biology. First, they describe methods for […]
Nobori and Tsuda review how the plant immune system is able to function in heterogeneous environments through its properties of resilience, tunability and balance. They define a resilient system as one where “output remains stable even when part of the system is disabled.” Abiotic factors such as high temperatures and pathogen effectors can disable parts […]
The 2017 Chemistry Nobel Prize went to the developers of cryo-electron microscopy, and this method is transforming plant science as well as other life sciences. In a pair of back-to-back papers, Wang et al. used cryo-EM to examine how ZAR1, a CC-NLR protein [Coiled-coil (CC) nucleotide-binding (NB), leucine-rich repeat (LRR)], interacts with its partners and […]
Bacterial flagellin is a well-known microbial pattern that triggers plant immune responses. Flagellin is a glycosylated protein polymer. The immunogenic domain is buried within the protein structure as well as beneath a glycan layer. Buscaill et al. set out to identify how this immunogenic elicitor is exposed and and to what extent this mechanism is […]
Review. Multicellular systems biology: Applying network science to plant organ patterning and function I really enjoyed this review article, which very successfully introduces the reader to the why and how of how to apply network science to plant science. Bassel never veers off into abstraction or “math-speak”, but instead roots his explanations in familiar biological […]
Synthetic biology is a set of tools, a way of thinking, the integration of engineering principles into biological sciences, and potentially the biggest opportunity for advances in plant sciences since PCR. Yet many struggle to define it, and fewer still grasp its full potential. Now, four early-career synthetic biologists have conducted a set of video […]
Review: Copy Number Variations shaping plant domestication Human-associated plant domestication is a co-evolutionary process that began at least 12,000 years ago. However, the genetic variations underlying many domestication traits are still unknown. In this review, Lye and Purugganan discuss how copy number variations (CNVs) have played an important role in plant and animal domestication. CNVs […]
Synthetic biology is a set of tools, a way of thinking, the integration of engineering principles into biological sciences, and potentially the biggest opportunity for advances in plant sciences since PCR. Yet many struggle to define it, and fewer still grasp its full potential. Now, four early-career synthetic biologists have conducted a set of video […]
Intentionally Building and Cultivating a Diverse Team Recorded May 15, 2019 About This Webinar Diversity in teams drives creativity and innovation, and it delivers better results. In this webinar, we explore the wide range of dimensions of diversity in the sciences and discuss how to be intentional when building and cultivating teams. We hear success […]