Entries by Mary Williams

George Coupland, Senior Editor

Areas of expertise Plant development, environmental regulation of development, flowering time, Arabidopsis, transcriptional regulation, evolutionary genetics. George Coupland is Director of the Department of Plant Developmental Biology at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany, a position he has held since 2001. He earned his PhD from University of Edinburgh, and […]

Ralph Bock, Senior Editor

Areas of expertise Chloroplast biology; gene expression; photosynthesis; evolutionary genetics. Ralph Bock is a Director at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology and a Professor at the University of Potsdam. He received undergraduate and MSc degrees from the University of Halle, Germany and a PhD from the University of Freiburg. Dr. Bock uses […]

Recognizing featured Plant Cell first authors, March and April 2017

Rakesh David, featured first author of Transcriptome-wide Mapping of RNA 5-Methylcytosine in Arabidopsis mRNAs and non-coding RNAs Current Position: Postdoctoral Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, University of Adelaide. Education: PhD, Plant Molecular Biology, Plant Science Division, Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Australia. Non-scientific Interests: Cycling, cricket, movies and reading. […]

Update: Stomatal function across temporal and spatial scales: deep-time trends, land-atmosphere coupling and global models

By Peter J Franks, Joseph A Berry, Danica L. Lombardozzi, and Gordon B Bonan The colonization of land by plants and their interaction with biogeochemical and atmospheric processes transformed continental climate and hydrology. Stomata, which evolved to optimize the biological economics of plant carbon uptake in exchange for water loss, play a crucial role in […]

Update: Blue light regulation of stomatal opening and the plasma membrane H+-ATPase

By Shin-ichiro Inoue, and Toshinori Kinoshita Light-induced stomatal responses were first reported 23 by Francis Darwin (1898). Stomata open in response to light, including blue and red light (Shimazaki et al., 2007).  Red light induces stomatal opening via photosynthesis in the mesophyll and guard cell chloroplasts (Mott et al., 2008; Suetsugu et al., 2014). In […]

Ten simple rules to make the most out of your undergraduate research career (PLOS)

PLOS Computational Biology has a series of “Ten Simple Rules” articles. Here is one for undergraduate researchers, “Ten simple rules to make the most out of your undergraduate research career” by Megan Yu and Yu-Min Kuo Here are the rules, read the article for elaboration Rule 1: Start early Rule 2: Know your foundational knowledge […]

Pamela Ronald (MIT Technology Review)

May 2017, MIT Technology Review by James Temple Reinventing Rice for a World Transformed by Climate Change UC Davis plant geneticist Pamela Ronald wants to create rice varieties that can survive in harsher conditions, including more frequent droughts. “Pamela Ronald stands in front of two rows of rice plants, sprouting from black plastic pots, in […]

James A. Birchler, Senior Editor

Areas of expertise Chromosome biology, epigenetics, dosage compensation, polyploidy, heterosis, gene silencing, synthetic chromosomes, genomic balance. James Birchler is Curators’ Professor at the University of Missouri, Columbia. He completed his BS degree at Eastern Illinois University and his PhD at Indiana University. Research interests of the Birchler laboratory include structure and behavior of chromosomes, centromere […]

Sebastian Bednarek, Senior Editor

Areas of expertise Intracellular protein trafficking, clathrin-dependent trafficking, membrane biogenesis, microtubules, polar growth, the phragmoplast, the cell wall. Sebastian Bednarek is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He earned his PhD from Michigan State University. He is an expert on intracellular protein trafficking and membrane biogenesis and his work […]