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What We're Reading: May 11th

Photosynthesis Special Issue This week's 'What We're Reading' summarizes the latest papers from the field of photosynthesis research.  This includes three reviews: the first focuses on the effect of elevated CO2 on secondary metabolism, the second looks at ways to improve carbon fixation, and the…

Negotiation skills: Sell yourself correctly

Self Reflection Blog Series : For and by Early Career Scientists I do not see myself being particularly talented in negotiation since I grew up in a culture where a well-behaved is often rewarded with a certain degree of entitlement. Being modest and humble were the two virtual values emphasized during…

ASPB Wins 2018 Excellence in New Communications Award for Plantae

(ASPB) is pleased to announce that Plantae, the online home for the global plant science community, has been awarded an Excellence in New Communications Award from the Society for New Communications Research of The Conference Board (SNCR) in the Communications, Communities, and Collaboration category…

Taproot S2E6: Graduate Student Mental Illness, A Wild-Type Phenotype?

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In the final episode of Season 2, Liz and Ivan talk with Jeff Long, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He is the vice chair of the Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology department and co-director of the Cell and Developmental Biology graduate program. Jeff has worked…

The Long and the Short of It: GA 2-oxidaseA9 Regulates Plant Height in Wheat

The discovery of semidwarfing genes in wheat and rice was a crucial turning point of the Green Revolution in the late 1960s. The Green Revolution aimed to maintain per capita food supplies worldwide despite the projected doubling of global population by the end of the 20th century. Its main features…

Plant Scientist Highlight: Ottoline Leyser

Why did you originally decide to pursue science and what got you interested particularly in plant hormones? I have always been interested in how things work. It’s the first thing I find myself asking whenever I see something interesting. Science is a great outlet for that sort of curiosity. My…

A New Polysaccharide with a Long Evolutionary History

By Peter Ulvskov and Jesper Harholt For the first time in a very long time, a new polysaccharide is reported in plants. Roberts et al. (2018) discovered an arabinoglucan in the moss Physcomitrella patens. This discovery came about not as a result of biochemical characterization of the moss cell…

Open Access Shy Girl Gives Kiwifruit Male Flowers

From the human perspective, separate sexes are the norm while hermaphroditism is an exotic concept. For plants, hermaphroditism is the norm. Dioecy, separate male and female individuals, is rare and dispersed in the angiosperm phylogeny (Käfer et al 2017, Renner 2014). In fact, dioecy is rare enough…

Taproot S2E5: Evolving Approaches: Herbicide Resistance in Weeds and What Men Can Do to Fight Gender Discrimination in Science

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In this episode, Ivan and Liz talk with Gina Baucom, Assistant Professor in Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan. Gina earned her Ph.D. and completed a postdoc at the University of Georgia. She joined the faculty at the University of Cincinnati in 2010 before moving…