From Plant Biology 2016 concurrent sessions: Heterosis & “How to Negotiate Your Offer” Workshop

We put out a call for some short write ups for the minisymposia at Plant Biology in Austin, TX. We’d like to grow this kind of digital coverage in the future, so if you’re interested in doing brief write ups of concurrent session talks at Plant Biology 2017, keep that in mind. Yao Luo, Research … Read more

Digital Dispatch, Day 5, Plant Biology 2016.

July 13 was the final day of Plant Biology 2016. Traditionally, it ends with the President’s symposium, and this year President Dixon’s theme was ‘Specialized Metabolism’, or all the things that plants make that aren’t strictly  necessary for survival (though this could be debated). .@ASPB President Dixon along a out why specialized metabolites matter for … Read more

Digital dispatch, Plant Biology day 4

Long Distance and Cell to cell signaling. Major symposia 4 organized by Philip Benfey was on long and short distance signaling between cells in plants. Benfey started off with a remark that plant cells are constantly communicating with one another, with neighbors and cells in entirely different parts of the plant. He then said “social … Read more

Digital Dispatch, Day 3 #plantbio16

There’s a lot of Twitter activity at Plant Biology this year (#plantbio16), but that’s a good thing even if it interrupts Twitter: Remember to mute #plantbio16 if you hate plants and science and are generally a horrible person! — Leon (@orchidhunter) July 11, 2016 Day 3 of Plant Biology started with the major symposia on … Read more

Digital dispatch, day 2 #plantbio16

An early start An analog start at the Plantae pavilion started the day at Plant Biology, day 2. Many people got up early and met up over coffee and baked goods and chatted on “birds of a feather” tables focused on different topics. There was an early morning workshop on putting on workshops written up … Read more

Digital dispatch Day 1 #plantbio16

Plant Biology 2016 officially got underway on July 9 in Austin, TX. With registration open, attendees flocked to the Draw Your Science board and a community coloring activity on the first floor off the conference center. Events underway quickly were the undergraduate poster session and a session on the much-needed reimagining of Postgraduate training in … Read more

Tell your story at #PlantBio16

Tell the world why you do what you do and how you do it on video at Plant Biology 2016. The Plant Science Today blog and podcast series, How Plant Scientists Work will be hosting a video edition at the Plant Biology 2016 meeting in Austin, TX. Tell your story This is an opportunity for you to … Read more

I’m Plant Scientist Jenny Mortimer, And this is how I work.

Location: Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), Lawrence Berkeley National Lab Current job/title: Director of Plant Systems Biology One word that describes how you work: enthusiastically. I’m conscious of the fact that I’m lucky that I get to do something I’m passionate about. Favorite thing you do at work: Learn Favorite plant: Arabidopsis (boring I know, but … Read more

I’m Plant Scientist Dan Peppe, and this is how I work.

Location: Baylor University Current job/title: Associate Professor, Department of Geosciences One word that describes how you work: excited Favorite thing you do at work: collect and study fossil leaves Favorite plant: Cycads (Cycads have existed for about 300 million years, fossil cycads are really cool and were ubiquitous in the Mesozoic (~225 – 66 million years ago), and modern cycads … Read more

I’m Plant Scientist Dr. Stacy DeBlasio, & this is how I work

Location: USDA-ARS, Ithaca Current job/title: Postdoctoral fellow One word that describes how you work: Hard Favorite thing you do at work: Western Blot Analysis Favorite plant: Hairy nightshade One interesting project you have been working on: Here in the Cilia lab we use a mass spec compatible cross-linker to fine-map the binding interfaces between plant viral proteins and the proteins … Read more

I’m Plant Scientist Elizabeth Haswell and this is how I work

Bio: I am an Associate Professor of Biology at Washington University in Saint Louis. I grew up in eastern Washington State, did a BS in Biochemistry at University of Washington with Luca Comai and Ted Young. I receive a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of California San Francisco, working on yeast chromatin remodeling in … Read more

I’m Plant Scientist Andrew Willoughby, and this is how I work

Location: University of Oklahoma Current job/title: Undergraduate Academic Assistant One word that describes how you work: Sophomoric Favorite thing you do at work: Floral Dip Transformations Favorite plant: Colocasia esculenta (ed.– Wikipedia page on this plant). One interesting project you have been working on: It’s completely tangential to my lab’s main focus but right now … Read more

What Plantae can do for you and what you can do for Plantae

The American Society of Plant Biologists (@ASPB) and Global Plant Council (@GlobalPlantGPC) have recently launched  Plantae. It is designed to be the central hub of plant science…your plant science. Plantae may seem like just another social network, but it is designed to be a much more complex community. I’ve noticed some fatigue lately with Twitter … Read more

Plant Biology ’15 wrap up

This is my final wrap up of #plantbiology15. My previous posts from before and during the conference (pdf) are here, here, here and here. There was a lot to take in.  The final impression of Plant Biology 2015, now that I’ve had a chance to reflect, is that it was a lot. A lot of things to see, do, … Read more

Plant Biology (#plantbiology15) days 4 and 5. Too much happening.

This post covers two days of Plant Biology, 2015 in Minneapolis. Your correspondent took the night last night to attend the closing mixer/party and so decided to combine the last two days into one post. Once again, this is just to give a reader a sense of what went on at the conference, not exhaustive … Read more

#plantbiology15 day 3. A day where energy returned

It rained this morning in Minneapolis. Luckily, that ended pretty quickly and the day was off to a quick start with the major symposia on epigenetics, with all of the speakers discussing the methylome (all of the DNA that ends up methylated in the genome, in what cells & in what conditions it occurs in … Read more

A day of connecting. Of pushing comfort zones. #plantbiology15 day 1

I went for a run this morning at 6:15am. It is now 20 past midnight. In between was day one of Plant Biology. And yes, I was there the whole day, or interacting with people at the conference that whole time. I’ve been getting known more and more for being the “twitter person” at Plant BIology … Read more