Entries by Mary Williams

Nature news feature: The lost art of looking at plants

Nature.  With the advent of advanced molecular techniques and tools, the detailed scrutiny of a plant’s physical attributes fell to the wayside. Focus has shifted from physiological characterization of a board range of species to detailed genomic work being done on a few select model organisms and, consequently, botany departments were forgotten and dismantled. Then […]

Review: 25 years of resistance (R) gene cloning identifies nine mechanisms for R protein function (Plant Cell)

Genes that confer pathogen resistance have been recognized for a very long time, and the first of these R genes was cloned 25 years ago. Kourelis and van der Hoorn examine lessons from the more than 300 R genes whose gene products are known, and from this analysis identify nine different mechanisms for their function. […]

Where do all the ecologists go? An investigation of US Doctorate recipients (Ecosphere)

Ecosphere. Hampton and Labou investigated the employment figures for recent recipients of PhDs (degree awarded between 2000 and 2011) in ecology from US-based institutions. They found that less than 20% of the PhD recipients are in tenure-track positions at research-focused, PhD-granting universities. Similar numbers were on the tenure track of non-PhD granting institutions, or in […]

Network-guided discovery of transcription factors epistasis in glucosinolate biosynthesis (Plant Cell)

Plant Cell.  Li et al. studied epistatic (non-additive) interactions amongst the network of transcription factors controlling aliphatic glucosinolate biosynthetic pathways, which are well-described and have diverse roles in plant defense. Specifically, the authors measured metabolite levels and transcript abundance in combinations of double mutnats of 20 transcription factors involved in glucosinolate production. They found that […]

What We’re Reading: February 2nd

Nature news feature: The lost art of looking at plants Nature.  With the advent of advanced molecular techniques and tools, the detailed scrutiny of a plant’s physical attributes fell to the wayside. Focus has shifted from physiological characterization of a board range of species to detailed genomic work being done on a few select model […]

Update: Monitoring Polysaccharide Dynamics in the Plant Cell Wall

By Catalin Voiniciuc, Markus Pauly, and Björn Usadel All plant cells are surrounded by complex walls that play a role in growth and differentiation of tissues. Walls provide mechanical integrity and structure to each cell, and represent an interface with neighboring cells and the environment (Somerville et al., 2004). Cell walls are composed primarily of […]

Recognizing featured Plant Cell first authors: Zhenlin Yang

Zhenlin Yang is featured first author of Structure of the Arabidopsis JMJ14-H3K4me3 Complex Provides Insight into the Substrate Specificity of KDM5 Subfamily Histone Demethylases Current Position: PhD Student, Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences Education: BS in Plant Science, Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University Non-scientific Interests: […]

Recognizing featured Plant Cell first authors: Xiangsong Chen

Xiangsong Chen is the featured first author of Canonical and Non-canonical Actions of Arabidopsis Histone Deacetylases in Ribosomal RNA Processing Current Position: Postdoctoral fellow in Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, University of Wisconsin-Madison Education: PhD in National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Huazhong Agricultural University Non-scientific Interests: Soccer, History Brief bio sketch: I obtained my […]

Editorial: The Plant Cell Welcomes Assistant Features Editors

We are pleased to introduce to our readers our new team of assistant features editors at The Plant Cell. These talented and energetic young scientists are passionate about plant science and dedicated to communicating the importance and fascination of plant biology to a wide audience. They will work with Features Editors Nancy Eckardt, Kevin Folta, […]