Entries by Mary Williams

How climate change threatens to make our bread less tasty (The Conversation)

Increasing carbon dioxide is impacting some of our favourite foods. Glenn Fitzgerald, University of Melbourne Climate change and extreme weather events are already impacting our food, from meat and vegetables, right through to wine. In our series on the Climate and Food, we’re looking at what this means for the food chain. The concentration of […]

As global food demand rises, climate change is hitting our staple crops (The Conversation)

Farmers face falling crop yields and growing food demand. Shutterstock Andrew Borrell, The University of Queensland Climate change and extreme weather events are already impacting our food, from meat and vegetables, right through to wine. In our series on the Climate and Food, we’re looking at what this means for the food chain. While increases […]

What We’re Reading: March 3

Update: Stomatal biology of CAM plants Crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) plants open their stomata at night, decreasing water loss and increasing water-use efficiency as well as drought tolerance. Males and Griffiths review the stomatal biology of CAM plants as compared to C3 plants. For example, CAM stomata are relatively insensitive to blue light, which is […]

Writing That Standout Research Statement

If you’re applying for an independent position, you’ll need to submit a Research Statement about your future research plans. Bethany Hout (@huotbethany) writes about a Pub Club group meeting to discuss how to write a Research Statment. Topics include “What makes a good research statement”, “How important is the Research Statement in the full application […]

The importance of pollen chemistry in evolutionary host shifts of bees

Some bees are generalist pollinators that gather pollen from a wide range of species, whereas others are specialists that visit only one or a few species. Vanderplanck et al. examined floral traits of the host plants of two different groups of generalist bees. There was no significant correlation between bees and the floral scent, floral […]

Welwitschia mirabilis sheds light on ancestral mechanisms prefiguring floral development ($)

In order to look at the origins of flowers, Moyroud et al. looked at reproductive controls in the gymnosperm Welwitschia mirabilis, which, as the authors say, is a good model because, “Although the plant body is famously bizarre, the reproductive structures are generalized.” Furthermore, its male reproductive structures are produced as soon as two years […]

Proteomics of two differently pathogenic races of Fusarium oxysporum

Fusarium oxysporum is a fungal pathogen of plants. F. oxysporum f. sp. conglutinans (Foc) causes fungal wilt in cabbage. Two races have been identified, with Race 2 being much more pathogenic than Race 1. Li et al. used a proteomic approach to investigate the origin of Race 2’s enhanced pathogenicity. They observed 145 proteins that […]