Recent Posts

Is This Newsworthy? How to Assess if a Press Release Might Become a Science News Story

About This Seminar To understand how to write a successful press release, we will put ourselves in the mind of a journalist trying to decide whether several press releases are “worthy” to go into the news cycle. This webinar will be interactive, allowing attendees to score press releases on several…

The Healing Power of Light

Light is life, especially for plants. It fuels photosynthesis and, when perceived by photoreceptors, directs important developmental programs, including photomorphogenesis and shade avoidance. Red and blue light wavelengths activate phytochrome (phy) and cryptochrome (cry) photoreceptors, respectively,…

An Improved Tool for Mapping the Membrane-Associated Protein Interactome

Protein-protein interactions mediate fundamental biological processes. Yeast two-hybrid assays can be used to detect protein-protein interactions in a fast and large-scale manner. However, in traditional yeast-two hybrid assays, the prey and bait proteins must be located in the nucleus to activate reporter…

Recognizing Plant Physiology first authors: Yuki Yoshida

Yuki Yoshida, first author of  The Arabidopsis phyB-9 mutant has a second-site mutation in the VENOSA4 gene that alters chloroplast size, photosynthetic traits, and leaf growth Current Position: Postdoctoral researcher in Graduate School of Science at The University of Tokyo. Education: PhD and…

What We're Reading: Sept 7th

Review: Harnessing synthetic chemistry to probe and hijack auxin signaling Auxin has been studied since Charles Darwin observed the phototropic response. More recently, chemical genetic approaches using auxin agonists and antagonists have been applied to studies of auxin. Torii et al. review how…

Plant Cell Editor Profile: Joseph J. Kieber

(Reprinted from The Plant Cell 10.1105/tpc.18.00110) At the crux of understanding plant biology lies the intricate hormone circuitry coordinating morphological and physiological changes as plants grow and adapt to their environment. As a curious middle school student in Locust, New Jersey, Professor…

What We're Reading: August 31

This week's edition is guest edited by Arif Ashraf, a PhD student at Iwate University, Japan and Graduate Student Ambassador of ASPB. His research interest is understanding the hormonal interplay in primary root development of Arabidopsis thaliana. He blogs about plant science (http://www.aribidopsis.com/).…

Natural Artist: How a Protein Kinase Helps Sculpt the Pollen Grain Surface From the Inside Out

Finding genes that function in plant development often requires mutant screening, but probing the wealth of natural variation can provide important insights as well. A major focus of developmental biology is uncovering the mechanism behind cell polarity, that is, how components are deposited asymmetrically…

Busted: Finding Cells Whose Division Planes Defy Prediction

Every plant organ, from tuber to tepal, is formed by cells that divide along precisely placed cell plates. While much is known about the molecular biology behind cell plate formation (e.g., Gu et al., 2016), why cells divide where they do is much less clear. Dividing cells have much in common with soap…