Mary Williams Chemical genetics is a powerful complement to conventional genetics. Rather than knocking out gene functions, protein (or other) functions can be perturbed through the addition of small molecules. One advantage is that several related proteins can be affected at the same time, avoiding the difficulties that come from genetic redundancy. Another is that treatment regimes … Read more
When is a flower not a flower? When it’s an inflorescence (cue laughter). Plants in the family Asteraceae produce inflorescences that look like single flowers, but are actually made up of hundreds of individual flowers. In many species, their are two types of flowers. The ray flowers (also known as ray florets) produce an elongated … Read more
We’re delighted to announce that the latest Teaching Tool in Plant Biology article “Carbon-Fixing Reactions of Photosynthesis” is published. This article picks up where the “Light-Dependent Reactions of Photosynthesis” left off. The Teaching Tool covers the core biochemistry of the carbon-fixing reactions of photosynthesis, as well as its variations, C4 and CAM. Finally, it addresses … Read more
This post From ‘Brain drain’ to ‘Brain circulation’: Global trends in international collaboration and researcher mobility was originally published on Editage Insights. The landscape of scientific research and publishing is fast changing. Scientific research is becoming increasingly global, and is no longer dominated only by the three science superpowers USA, Europe, and Japan. With China, … Read more
In the Plant Physiology publishing workshop held at Plant Biology 2016, the question arose of how people keep up with the huge number of papers being published. Mike Blatt shared the strategy used by his lab, which I’m familiar with as an honorary member. The lab group meets weekly, and two of every four meetings … 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 July issue of The Plant Cell. Fangwei Gu, featured first author of Arabidopsis CSLD5 functions in cell plate formation in a cell cycle-dependent manner Current Position: Communication Specialist at WuXi AppTec. … Read more
2016 is the International Year of Pulses, which the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has been celebrating throughout the year by releasing infographics, information and hosting events; see these and more news here and at #IYP2016. Pulses are “the dehydrated edible seeds of leguminous plants that produce from one to twelve grains of various … Read more
Have you explored LENS? It is a new way of viewing articles published by The Plant Cell and Plant Physiology (as well as other journals; this was designed originally for eLife articles). LENS is a really useful way to read articles online. You can view an article using the LENS viewer by either clicking on … Read more
The final major symposium of the Plant Biology 2016 conference was organized by ASPB President Richard Dixon and covered various aspects of specialized metabolism in plants (note that the term specialized metabolism has largely supplanted the older term secondary metabolism, which carries with it an implication that it is not as important as primary metabolism; … Read more
The first full day of Plant Biology 2016 started with a major symposium, organized by Harry Klee, that focused on the nutritional quality and taste of food. The first speaker, Cathie Martin from the John Innes Centre (UK), set the stage by reminding us that food security involves both the nutritional quality and safety of … Read more
As we begin the Plant Biology meeting today, remember that many of our colleagues will be following along virtually. What works for these long-distance participants? Here are some examples from two very recent conferences. Have a look and see what you find useful. If you’d like to see how the recent Arabidopsis meeting was shared … Read more
2 July ICAR 2016 This morning I attended the Peptide Hormone session and the Genome Editing session – both were excellent. I hope I’ve captured them adequately – be sure to have a look at the referenced papers for more info than I was able to provide in this “on the fly” report! Session 17 … Read more
July 1 at ICAR 2016 Caveat emptor – today was a long day and I’m tired, but I’m sharing my notes from today’s talks (at least the ones I attended) for those of you who are interested. As before, check out the Twitter stream for additional insights (and nice photos) from the talks. If you … Read more
Be sure to check out the #ICAR_2016 Twitter stream to get all the news with contributions from several people. @GARNetweets and I are mostly attending different concurrent sessions, so be sure to see his stream for additional talks and links. Also, the conference program is here. I should point out that once again the conference … Read more
Today was the first day of the 27th International Conference on Arabidopsis Research, also known as ICAR. If you follow Twitter, we’re using #ICAR_2016 (apparently there is an “Animal Reproduction” conference using #ICAR2016 so we’ve added the underscore; as Twitter becomes more and more popular we’re running into more of these “bandwidth” issues). The conference … Read more
Guest post from Sonja Dunbar, PhD student at the University of Cambridge @PlantSciSonja In Easter term I cover the topic of conservation with my students, wandering into the area where plant science very clearly intersects with political and social factors. We are also close to exams at this point, one of which has a synoptic … 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 June issue of The Plant Cell. Yuki Kondo, featured first author of Vascular Cell Induction Culture System Using Arabidopsis Leaves (VISUAL) Reveals the Sequential Differentiation of Sieve Element-like Cells Current Position: … Read more
You are probably familiar with the process of making a transgenic plant; gene identification, gene introduction into a plant cell via bombardment or Agrobacterium tumefaciens, selection of transformed tissue, and plant regeneration (as shown in the diagram from Teaching Tools in Plant Biology). Many of you have probably carried out the process, at least in … Read more
This Research in Focus is written by science writer Peter Minorsky (ASPB and Mercy College) who writes the monthly On the Inside column for Plant Physiology. This summary describes a paper by Lacey and Binder, to be published in the July 2016 issue. The authors examine a putative ethylene receptor in cyanobacteria; this protein had … Read more
Did you know that ASPB is the publisher of two top plant science research journals? Publishing has always been a core part of ASPB’s mission. At Plant Biology 2016 (July 9 – 13 in Austin, Texas), you can meet, learn from and share you thoughts with the Editors-in-Chief of the ASPB journals. Publishing in and … Read more
