Recent Posts

Drought-induced civil conflict among the ancient Maya (Nature Comms)

The observation that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” (attributed to philosopher George Santayana) is quite relevant for our efforts to comprehend the impacts of climate change. As we observe temperature and rainfall records being broken with increasing frequency,…

How to Thrive under Stress: Stay True to Your Roots

Groen et al. investigate the genes and traits under selection when rice experiences drought.  By Simon C. “Niels” Groen a,b and Amelia Henryc a Institute of Integrative Genome Biology and Department of Nematology, University of California at Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA; b Center for Genomics…

How drought affects the asynchrony between anthesis and silking

Liu et al. demonstrate how manipulating ZmEXPA4 gene expression in developing maize ears alleviates the prolonged anthesis and silking interval in response to drought. The Plant Cell (2021) https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koab083  By Boxin Liu and Feng Qin Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of…