
Beyond AlphaFold: The Technologies Waiting to Change Plant Science
Blog, Featured Article 2There is probably not a plant scientist on the planet who has not heard of AlphaFold (Jumper et al., 2021). Many of you reading this have likely used it. What began as DeepMind’s attempt to apply artificial intelligence to one of biology’s longest-standing problems became a breakthrough that gave…

Focus issue on AI for plant sciences
Plant Science Research WeeklyThere are numerous ways that AI can support research productivity through its ability to evaluate large datasets. Plant Communications has assembled a collection of articles that describe some of these new tools and approaches. As an example, Jang et al. describe the use of digital twins as tools to…

Letter. OpenCRISPR-1 in rice: when AI meets plant genome editing
Plant Science Research WeeklyGenome editing has rapidly transformed biology, and Cas9 remains the most widely used tool for making targeted changes in DNA. Recently, a new AI-designed editor called OpenCRISPR-1 (OC1) which differs from prototypical SpCas by more than 400 amino acids has shown promise in human cells. Das and colleagues…

Unveiling PlantScience.ai: A niche LLM to power your plant science research
Plant Science Research WeeklyYou ask a plant science specific question to a general-purpose large language model (LLM) and it puts out vague answers. Sometimes you wonder if the answer is valid or if the LLM is pulling you into a hallucination trap! Does this sound familiar? To tackle this problem, PlantScience.ai, a virtual scientist…

Review: Deep learning approaches to understanding stomatal function
Plant Science Research WeeklySydney Brenner famously said, “Progress in science depends on new techniques, new discoveries and new ideas, probably in that order.” Right now, we’re seeing how advancements and new techniques in artificial intelligence and deep learning are being applied in plant sciences, including in the analysis…

Review: Deep learning in image-based plant phenotyping
Plant Science Research WeeklyAs a writer and an editor, I am horrified by the idea that thinking can be replaced by artificial intelligence. But I do recognize that deep learning / machine learning / artificial intelligence can provide major opportunities for data analysis, as eloquently described in this review article by Murphy…
