Mary Williams

I studied Biochemistry at Berkeley (BA), Plant Molecular Biology at Rockefeller (PhD), did a postdoc at Berkeley with Ian Sussex, and then spent 14 years as a Biology professor at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. In 2009 I started working at the American Society of Plant Biologists as Features Editor of the journal Plant Cell and the developer of Teaching Tools in Plant Biology. My passion lies in making it a little bit easier for students of all ages to understand plants and plant science research. I live in Glasgow, Scotland, with my family and our much adored dog.

Nobel Fever strikes again

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Every year at about this time we start to wonder who will be this year’s Nobel Prize recipients (the Prizes will be announced starting next Monday, October 3). Who are your predictions? As a reminder, here are some of the recent laureates (in Physiology or Medicine, or Chemistry) with their topics, taken from the wonderfully … Read more

Winning entries of the August 2016 “Teaching Tools Proposal” competition

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We had many excellent proposals submitted for the fourth round of the “Teaching Tools in Plant Biology” competition, from which we selected five for further development. We’ve added another opportunity for you to submit your ideas for consideration as a Teaching Tools, deadline March 31, 2017 (see this for more information). Feel free to contact … Read more

In Brief. Field of genes: Uncovering Environmental Gene Regulatory Influence Networks in Rice that Function During High-temperature and Drought Stress

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This Research in Focus is reprinted from an In Brief by Science Editor Jennifer Lockhart in The Plant Cell, which summarizes a new article by Wilkins et al. This study explores stress response networks in rice using by combining chromatin accessibility analysis with co-expression data and network inference algorithms. Heat and drought stress greatly restrict … Read more

In Brief. Swept Away: Protein Mobility in the Phloem

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This Research in Focus is reprinted from an In Brief by Science Editor Jennifer Mach in The Plant Cell, which summarizes a new article by Paultre et al. This study explores how proteins move through the phloem. Transport of macromolecules through the phloem has received increasing interest since the discovery that FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) … Read more