In research, work never really ends “Happy to give this presentation.”  “Sure, I can take on teaching hours.” “I can do an extra side project.” “I’ll take care of this experiment over the weekend.” Do phrases like that sound familiar? Whether it comes from enthusiasm or guilt,…

In plants, compared to male meiosis, female meiosis has remained largely unexplored. In our recent study published in The Plant Cell (Hu and Prusicki et al., 2026), by live cell imaging, we visualize female meiosis in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, advancing the knowledge of reproductive development. Background:…

It was a cold Tuesday afternoon in my second year when my advisor sat across from me and said, almost gently, "I think we need to reconsider the direction of your project." I had spent the last year optimizing the phenotyping protocol for drought response in a specific Arabidopsis mutant line. I had…

Plantae Presents - From Bench to Business: Building Plant Science-Based Startups Featuring Kathleen Denya, Sarah Hammer, and Lucas Lieber   When: Thursday, May 28, 2026, at 8:00 AM PDT | 11:00 AM EDT | 4:00 PM BST | 11:00 PM Beijing About this Webinar Plant scientists are doing some of the most…

Competition for scientific job positions is increasingly fierce nowadays. That pressure is felt even more strongly in the global south, where stable and well-funded jobs for highly trained scientists are limited, often available in a select few cities (Kent et al, 2022[1]). Major employers include…

We are putting our spotlight in this section on how secondary cell walls acquire the precise shape, structure, and polarity necessary for explosive seed dispersal in the small weed Cardamine hirsuta. Specifically, we wanted to understand the role of cellulose- a major structural component of plant cell…

There is a particular look people give when you say you are a plant scientist. It falls somewhere between “Oh, that’s… nice” and the polite expression usually reserved for someone who has just confessed to collecting vintage doorknobs. Once, someone replied, “Ah, I love gardening too,” and…

Importance of collaboration Collaboration has become central to contemporary science. The 2024 Physiology Nobel laureate Victor Ambrose remarked that “two people talking about something they’re really interested in is more than just twice one person. Because the exchange of ideas can be catalytic.”…