Wojciech J. Nawrocki, first author of Chlororespiration controls growth under intermittent light Current Position: Postdoctoral fellow at the VU Amsterdam Education: MSc in Biophysics, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France, PhD, Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique, CNRS, Paris, France Non-scientific Interests: Volleyball, experimental music, politics Brief bio: After an enjoyable Erasmus program in Paris I decided to study […]
I think trees are awesome, and I mean that in the truest sense of the word. They dwarf us in height, and when we look at a tree that has lived for hundreds or thousands of years it is impossible not to think of that span in terms of human generations and human history. But, […]
Several recent studies have demonstrated that plants are able to respond to environmental challenges within minutes, through electrical signals, calcium oscillations, hydraulic changes, metabolites such as glutamate, and reactive oxygen species. Kollist et al. review studies of rapid responses that control stomatal aperture as well those leading to systemic signalling and acclimation. Although transcriptomic studies […]
What tools and skills do tomorrow’s plant scientists need, and how can we as a community ensure that today’s students get appropriate training? The Plant Science Research Network (PSRN), a consortium of plant science organizations and societies, has organized a series of workshops and discussions to try to answer these questions. Henkhaus et al. present […]
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? Gao et al. argue that we should be more aware of the beneficial impacts of friendly protists that eat potentially harmful microbes in the rhizosphere (they deliberately exclude plant pathogenic protists in their discussion). Protists are a diverse paraphyletic group of mostly single-celled eukaryotes. Bacterivorous protists […]
Plants can die from a lack of oxygen (hypoxia), which contributes to the devastating losses caused by flooding. Iacopino et al. set out to develop a more specific method for detecting oxygen levels in plants, based on the mammalian Hypoxia Inducible transcription Factor HIF. HIF is hydroxylated by an oxygen-dependent enzyme, with the hydroxylated form […]
Properly functioning guard cells change size in response to myriad stimuli to control the passage of water and gasses through stomata. The change in volume is mirrored by changes in plasma membrane surface area, with membrane moving dynamically between tonoplast and plasma membrane as needed. Bourdais et al. have developed a high-throughput imaging method to […]
Opinion: Limits to tree growth and longevity ($) I think trees are awesome, and I mean that in the truest sense of the word. They dwarf us in height, and when we look at a tree that has lived for hundreds or thousands of years it is impossible not to think of that span in […]
Wei Zeng, first author of Modulation of auxin signaling and development by polyadenylation machinery Current Position: Ph.D. candidate, Key Laboratory of Plant Molecular Physiology, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China Education: M.S. in College of Life Sciences, Xinyang Normal University, China Non-scientific Interests: Music, movie, badminton Brief bio: During my Ph.D. […]