The urgent need to support and sustain plant research is indisputable, but sometimes plant education, the foundation upon which research rests, doesn’t get the same support. In January 2025, a group of dedicated educators (mostly higher education and outreach) spent two days together to strategize a vision for a secure, sustainable, and effective educational landscape. […]
Opinion: Genomic studies hint at what makes a tree a tree This is such an engaging and though-provoking review article. I’d love to ask a group of students to think about what makes a tree a tree, including such questions as: How do we define trees? Do woody plants share a single origin? How many […]
This is an interesting and engaging review article, written by a team from Bayer US Crop Science, on how mutations (broadly defined) have benefited plant domestication and breeding. While it briefly covers the basics, such as population genetics, it really focuses on demystifying and normalizing the concept of mutations in the context of plant breeding. […]
This review by Somssich et al., part of a forthcoming Focus Collection on Metabolites, provides an overview of the chemical arsenal of defense compounds in plants. Playfully titled “Guns in Rosettes”, it focuses on the well-characterized model plant Arabidopsis. The article discusses defense metabolites by chemical class, including terpenoids as well as compounds derived from […]
I was initially drawn to this review by curiosity about its title; I realized I hadn’t ever wondered how and why viral infections cause symptoms in plants. I’m so glad I looked into it! This is a compelling and fascinating review that takes a broad look at plant-virus interactions. It starts with a brief look […]
Review: Beautiful mutations This is an interesting and engaging review article, written by a team from Bayer US Crop Science, on how mutations (broadly defined) have benefited plant domestication and breeding. While it briefly covers the basics, such as population genetics, it really focuses on demystifying and normalizing the concept of mutations in the context […]
Agriculture contributes substantially to climate change. Many agricultural interventions have been suggested as opportunities to lower this impact, through CO2 sequestration or through reducing emissions of CO2 and CH4. This review by Vickers and Zerbe lays out how to use Fermi calculations to identify which of these interventions might have the biggest impact and the […]
This very interesting preprint by Fernández Burda et al. investigates how well large-language models (LLMs, such as ChatGPT) are able to correctly answer questions about plant molecular biology. The article is a huge group effort that engaged the help of over 100 plant scientists to develop MoBioPlant (https://huggingface.co/datasets/manufernandezbur/MoBiPlant) as a resource. The group created a […]
Pangenomes are amazing resources that provide glimpses into evolution that no single genome can capture. This new article by Dong et al. is a treat, as it describes the findings from a compilation of 138 bryophyte genomes, of which 123 are newly sequenced. Bryophytes are non-vascular plants (mosses, liverworts, and hornworts) and a monophyletic sister […]