Featured Review: Effects of water stress on rhizodeposition Rhizodeposition refers to the release of organic compounds from roots into soil. Rhizodeposits alter the composition and structure of soil and also provide food for soil microbes whose actions can increase the bioavailability of soil organic matter. Preece and Peñuelas review how drought affects rhizodeposition, which in … Read more
Here’s a sneak preview of what will be presented at the upcoming Phenome 2017 conference, to be held on Feb. 10-14 in Tucson, AZ. Phenome 2017 will provide a unique opportunity for plant biologists, engineers, computer and information scientists, chemists, mathematicians, geologists, physicists, and meteorologists to mingle, forge collaborations, share insights, and develop strategies to tackle … Read more
Here’s a sneak preview of what will be presented at the upcoming Phenome 2017 conference, to be held on Feb. 10-14 in Tucson, AZ. Phenome 2017 will provide a unique opportunity for plant biologists, engineers, computer and information scientists, chemists, mathematicians, geologists, physicists, and meteorologists to mingle, forge collaborations, share insights, and develop strategies to … Read more
We start with a trio of papers that explore plant cell proliferation Featured Review: Plants grow with a little help from their organelle friends ($) Mitochondria and chloroplasts are semi-autonomous organelles that provide cells with energy, metabolites and hormones. Van Dingenen et al. review organelles’ dynamic roles during organ growth. As an obvious example, many … Read more
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Biological Technologies Office (BTO) has announced a Proposers Day for the new Insect Allies program. The Insect Allies program will seek to “provide an alternative to traditional agricultural threat response, using targeted gene therapy to protect mature plants within a single growing season.” Insect Allies is a unique … Read more
Frédéric Bouché, a postdoctoral research with Richard Amasino at the University of Wisconsin, recently caught our attention when he published a set of impressive visual abstracts to support his latest research papers. We invited him to share how and why he makes these images. -Editors When you work hard, and your scientific work is finally … Read more
Emanuel Epstein (born November 5, 1916), the father of modern root physiology and biochemistry Editor’s note: ASPB is happy to publish this appreciation of UC-Davis Professor Emeritus, Emanuel Epstein, on the occasion of his 100th birthday. A single rye plant may possess a root meshwork of more than 600 km total length. Unbelievable, but measured … Read more
Featured Review: Role of Mass Spectrometry in Biology Mass spectrometry (MS) has become a core tool for molecular and structural biology. Lössl et al. review the history of MS and provide an accessible explanation for how it works and its applications, with numerous examples. This is a must-read for students of biochemistry as well as … Read more
I consider it a tremendous privilege to serve you as president of ASPB this year. Because I have participated for the past several years as chair of the Publications Committee and member of the Science Policy and Executive Committees, I feel as though the start of this year provides an invaluable opportunity to take a … Read more
Recently, we’ve been profiling first authors of Plant Cell papers that are selected for In Brief summaries. Here are the first-author profiles from the October issue of The Plant Cell. Olivia Wilkins and Christoph Hafemeister, featured first authors of EGRINs (Environmental Gene Regulatory Influence Networks) in Rice That Function in the Response to Water Deficit, … Read more
Featured Review: Evolution of ROS signaling ($) Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are partially reduced or excited forms of oxygen (for example, O2·−) that are reactive and damaging towards cellular components. Because ROS are produced as byproducts of metabolism, cells have evolved ROS detoxification pathways; more than 150 Arabidopsis genes contribute to ROS detoxification. Inupakutika et … Read more
On October 10th, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) convened a summit in Chicago for the purpose of identifying the future of data in agriculture and building on existing US government-wide investments in big data. NIFA Director Sonny Ramaswamy, who attended the summit, announced a new initiative named … Read more
Featured Review: Update of Arabidopsis floral meristem formation ($) Genetic approaches using Arabidopsis have identified key players in the initiation and elaboration of floral meristems and flowers. These core findings are now expanded to encompass the roles of hormone fluxes and mechanical forces, and systems-wide modeling of gene regulatory networks. In this review, Denay et … Read more
As of January 2017, The Plant Cell will offer authors the option of associating a Peer Review Report with each research article. Reviewer anonymity will be strictly maintained. The reports will include the major comments from reviewers and the editors’ decision letters along with the authors’ response to reviewers for each submission of the manuscript … Read more
Last week, the National Science Foundation (NSF) released a solicitation for a new program, Transdisciplinary Research in Principles of Data Science (TRIPODS). This program aims to bring together the statistics, mathematics, and theoretical computer science communities to develop the theoretical foundations of data science through integrated research and training activities. TRIPODS builds off existing investments … Read more
Featured Review: Celebrating 150 years since Mendel’s Discoveries ($) This review describes Mendel’s seminal work and how it laid the foundation for today’s plant breeding (as well as all of genetics). Smýka et al. trace the evolution of our understanding from Mendel’s discrete traits through continuous traits and quantitative trait loci (including the contributions of … Read more
This Commentary, written by Emily Larson, is from the October issue of Plant Physiology. The spatial and temporal accumulation of auxins promotes and regulates polarized, gravitropic, and phototropic growth in plants. The proteins involved in initiating and maintaining the auxin gradients have been studied and remain active areas of research in the hormonal regulation of … Read more
We’re in the midst of lots of changes at ASPB and Plantae. We’ll be launching a new and improved Plantae user interface before the end of the year, and thanks to your excellent feedback we will be launching new features to accompany the new interface (watch this space!). One of these new features is the … Read more
Warmest congratulations to Yoshinori Ohsumi, 2016 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, “for his discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy”. Autophagy (self-eating) is a process through which cells selectively degrade and recycle cellular components. Ohsumi’s research has primarily focused on yeast, but he has also studied autophagy in plants. In fact, for the past twenty years … Read more
Last week I was a guest of the PhD students of the iGRAD-Plant program, based at Heinrich Heine University (HHU), Düsseldorf (Germany). The program is an international joint PhD program with the nearby Research Center Jülich and the Genetics Program of Michigan State University. The program is funded by a grant (coordinated by Professor Andreas … Read more