Recent Posts

Review: The cell biology of primary cell walls during salt stress (Plant Cell)

Salt is a massive problem for most land plants. At the macroscopic level, excess soil salinity can cause stunting or death. At the molecular / cellular level, salinity causes both osmotic and ionic challenges that affect membrane homeostasis, molecular interactions, and protein stability. A new review…

New Teaching Tool, “The Floral Transition and Adaptation to a Changing Environment: from Model Species to Cereal Crops"

Meet the newest member of the Teaching Tools in Plant Biology family, The Floral Transition and Adaptation to a Changing Environment: from Model Species to Cereal Crops, by Michela Osnato. Freely available in the November 2022 issue of The Plant Cell. You can download the resources here, from the supplemental…

Review. Defining biodiverse reforestation: Why it matters for climate change mitigation and biodiversity (PPP)

Biodiversity contributes to thriving, healthy ecosystems that are essential for climate tolerance, improving water quality and habitat structure. As time goes on, there is increasing pressure to address climate change concerns worldwide, with one possible climate change mitigation approach being reforestation…

Allelic shift in cis-elements of the transcription factor gene RAP2.12 underlies adaptation associated with humidity in Arabidopsis thaliana (Science Adv)

To better understand plant responses to different environments, Lou et al. compared Arabidopsis thaliana accessions derived from Sichuan (high precipitation/regular flooding) and Tibet (arid) to isolate genetic adaptations towards flooding stress. The two accessions showed divergent phenotypes: the Sichuan…

URM Plant Scientist Highlights - Dawn Nagel (she/her)

Dawn Nagel (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Genetics and Genomics in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences at UC Riverside. She has been a faculty member at UCR since 2016. Dawn was born and raised in Guyana as the youngest of three children. As an undergraduate, she studied general biology…
Headshot of Thelma Madzima. In the background are a series of pipette tip boxes and a mini vortexer.

URM Plant Scientist Highlights - Thelma Madzima (she/her)

Dr. Thelma Madzima (she/her) is one of very few Black faculty in the USA who are plant molecular biologists. Originally from Zimbabwe, Thelma immigrated to the US at the age of 17 to attend college. She received her B.S. in Plant Science and Plant Biotechnology from Fort Valley State University, a historically…

Maintaining membrane integrity in the face of abiotic stress

Ruiz-López & Pérez-Sancho et al describe a mechanism that control the homeostasis of diacylglycerol at the plasma membrane in plants after abiotic stress. Plant Cell. https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koab122 Miguel Ángel Botella Mesa – IHSM-UMA-CSIC, Málaga, Spain Jessica Pérez Sancho…

How a Mangrove tree can help to improve the salt tolerance of Arabidopsis and Rice

Affiliation: University of Melbourne ORCiD: 0000-0001-5092-6168 email: marc.somssich@unimelb.edu.au Mangrove trees live and thrive in intertidal zones, where they are regularly inundated with salt water. To survive such harsh environmental conditions, they have evolved several features to improve…

The fat of the land: cuticle formation in terrestrial plants

Madeleine Seale Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3RB, United Kingdom Maddy.seale@plants.ox.ac.uk ORCID: 0000-0002-8924-3943   In a world surrounded by a vast expanse of gaseous air, water is constantly evaporating from aqueous sources…