Durum wheat genome highlights past domestication signatures and future improvement targets Durum wheat cultivar Svevo (Triticum turgidum L. ssp. durum) is a cereal crop predominantly grown for pasta production. It is the result of multiple rounds of domestication, originally deriving from wild emmer wheat from the Fertile Crescent approximately 10,000 years ago. Here, Maccaferri et […]
Maximizing the signal, decreasing the noise, Part 2: Skills for speaking and designing clearly Recorded April 2019 About This Webinar In part 1 of the webinar, Professor Tobias Baskin introduced a philosophy for writing clearly based on recognizing that our words are read. In part 2, he extends that philosophy to speaking and designing. Your […]
If you haven’t been paying attention, you may have missed the great advances that have been taking place in xylem research recently. This excellent review by Brodersen et al. is your chance to catch up. Like all aspects of plant science, new tools and techniques have provided tremendous new insights into how plants work. Key […]
Carnivorous plants are one of the easiest ways to demonstrate to children that “plants are cool too”. In their new review, Pavlovič and Mithöfer show that carnivorous plants can also be a gateway to introduce the subject of how plants defend themselves against herbivory, by drawing links between herbivory and carnivory. For example, glandular trichomes […]
“Earth is a cold place with 80% of its biosphere permanently below 5°C,” begins this study of an Antarctic psychrophile (“cold-lover”). As Szyszka-Mroz et al. indicate, the permanently cold-adapted inhabitants of permanently frozen lakes are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, as well as providing interesting insights into how life occurs at near-freezing […]
Phytochrome is one of the key photoreceptors in plants, and famous for switching between active and inactive (Pfr and Pr) forms by absorption of far-red and red light; additionally, Pfr converts slowly to Pr independently of light. Furthermore, in the nucleus, the Pfr form can aggregate into photobodies. Huang et al. have identified PCH1 (PHOTOPERIODIC […]
Review: Functional status of xylem through time ($) If you haven’t been paying attention, you may have missed the great advances that have been taking place in xylem research recently. This excellent review by Brodersen et al. is your chance to catch up. Like all aspects of plant science, new tools and techniques have provided […]
Preparing your research story for peer review and publication Recorded Mary 2019 About this Webinar Considering how important writing is to a career in science, many scientists receive little formal training in the writing process. In this seminar, Mary shares tips to help overcome common writing problems, drawing on her 25 years of teaching […]
This is a great review by Judelson and Ah-Fong on the diverse signals that occur between plants and their oomycete pathogens. The authors start by describing the life- and infectivity-cycles of disease-causing oomycetes, including the familiar plant pathogens, “aggressive” Pythium and “stealthy” Phytophthora. They then cover the exchanges between host and microbe at the barrier […]