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 […]
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 […]
Evan Peck, an Assistant Professor at Bucknell College, writes about how he nearly didn’t apply to a job he loves, and what a liberal arts college is. The Jobs I Didn’t See: My Misconceptions of the Academic Job Market Read more here.
This resource provides a set of videos and a practical investigation aimed at supporting working scientifically in the classroom and relating science to real world experiences. In the first video Professor Brian Cox joins a teacher to find out how to set up and run an investigation to find out if plants need soil to […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
PATHOGENESIS-RELATED 1 (PR-1) protein was identified 50 years ago as a small protein induced in response to pathogens, but its mode of action has remained obscure. PR-1 is a member of the CAP family (cysteine-rich secretory protein, antigen 5, and pathogenesis-related 1). These proteins share a 150 amino acid domain that forms an α-β-α sandwich […]