Tag: Climate Change

This comprehensive review by Mogollón et al. would be a great starting point to help students think about the pressing challenge of feeding growing numbers of people in the face of climate change. The article begins with the impact of food production on the environment; the release of greenhouse gasses,…

In a new article by Wu et al., a large team of collaborators led by the Moi lab addressed this question by doing a huge outdoor evolution experiment at 30 places with different climates. The authors achieved real-time adaptation under natural conditions by sowing a mixture of 231 Arabidopsis thaliana…

Climate change brings about higher temperatures, threatening plant populations worldwide. Higher temperatures interfere with reproductive processes such as pollen production or fertilization, even if the plant itself can withstand these temperatures. For example, some plants can withstand temperatures…

This is the last edition of PSRW before the new year. Although we have spent the past year celebrating the breakthroughs in plant science, I am going to end on a more sober note, which is succinctly captured in this important special report from Ripple et al. The authors pull together data from across…

Plants, like animals, have a natural immune system that helps them defend against diseases. They not only fight local pathogens but can also alert distant, non-infected tissues to prepare for infection, a process called systemic acquired resistance (SAR). All these mechanisms can be threatened by climate…

Agriculture contributes substantially to climate change. Many agricultural interventions have been suggested as opportunities to lower this impact, through CO2 sequestration or through reducing emissions of CO2 and CH4. This review by Vickers and Zerbe lays out how to use Fermi calculations to identify…

Precipitation plays an important role in shaping leaf tissue composition, and as climate change progresses, we’ll likely see dramatic shifts in precipitation regimes. Changes in leaf tissue composition due to increased rainfall or drought may have cascading effects on soil microbe communities and ultimately…

The June 12 issue of Science has a focus on plants and heat that includes several excellent review and research articles. In a very interesting review, Singh Yadav et al. discuss the complex and fascinating question of how plants sense temperature, emphasizing both the biophysical nature of temperature…