By Heidi Wipf, Conviron Scholar About four years ago, during a trip to the Venezuelan Embassy in San Francisco, a tropical biologist stopped to have his photograph taken outside the doors of the California Academy of Sciences – a planetarium, aquarium, rainforest, and natural history museum located in the heart of Golden Gate Park. While […]
Source: Molecular Plant Science Excellence Innovation Center / Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology Release time: 2019-01-21 Translated from the original. On January 4th, the international academic journal The Plant Cell published a paper from the research group of the Institute of Plant and Plant Ecology, Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Chinese Academy of […]
Alessandro Occhialini, first author of MoChlo: A versatile modular cloning toolbox for chloroplast Current position: Postdoctoral research scientist at the department of Food Science, University of Tennessee UTK (Knoxville, USA) Education: PhD degree in plant cellular biology, at the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland) Non-scientific interests: Fishing, hiking, mushroom hunting, fitness, running, football Brief bio: My […]
It’s January, which seems to be a month of weather extremes for many “temperate” parts of the globe. Here’s an excellent collection to curl up with as you try to stay warm or cool and out of the elements. The issue includes free-to-access reviews focused on using genomic data (e.g., genome-wide associate studies, GWAS), to […]
I feel guilty about using plastics but it’s hard to break free; they are so integral to a modern lifestyle. However, the problem of plastic pollution is frightening. About 80% of manufactured plastic ends up in landfills or the natural environment. It’s appalling to learn that the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” covers 1.6 million km2. […]
Plant cell walls are complex and somewhat difficult to study, but also idespensible for plants and central to many of the ways that people use plants (from wood to fibers to fuels). Two new articles review diverse aspects of plant cell wall synthesis. Polko and Kieber (Plant Cell 10.1105/tpc.18.00760 $) focus on the regulation of […]
Phenotypic plasticity, or the ability to change in response to the environment, is one of the most characteristic (and to me, endearing) qualities of plants. As Arnold et al. observe, it is also one of the most important in terms of future climate change; phenotypic plasticity will mean the difference between species that persist and […]
Writing is one of the most important of a scientist’s skills but often overlooked during their training. As Freeling et al. observe, good writing takes time, both to learn and to teach, so what’s the incentive? In this Opinion article, they make an effort to quantify the impact (measured by citation numbers) of “good writing”. […]
The vascular cambium is a meristematic tissue that is responsible for lateral growth and the continued production of new xylem and phloem; in woody plants, the shoot vascular cambium makes wood. A new pair of papers investigates how the Arabidopsis root vascular cambium forms and how it functions. Through mutant analysis and imaging, the authors […]