We’re delighted to announce that the latest Teaching Tool in Plant Biology article “Light-Dependent Reactions of Photosynthesis” is published. This article was written by me (Mary Williams), as well Ru Zhang (Carnegie Institute of Science) and Johnna Roose (Louisiana State University). Ru and Johnna are both educators and researchers who specialize in the study of … 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 November’s issue of The Plant Cell. Sascha Venturelli, featured co-first author of Plants Release Precursors of Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors to Suppress Growth of Competitors Current Position: Senior researcher at the Department of … Read more
This post is part of the Recognizing our Authors series. Björn Usadel The Plant Cell, Plant Physiology Björn Usadel studied biochemistry in Berlin and New York. He went on to pursue a PhD at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology and Potsdam University with Markus Pauly. Afterward he worked with Mark Stitt on … Read more
Guest post from Sonja Dunbar, PhD student at the University of Cambridge Plants need nutrients and they have a lot of different ways to acquire them from the soil, as the 2nd year undergraduate students I teach at the University of Cambridge recently discovered in lectures. One thing our lecture courses try to emphasise at … Read more
The PRL’s Golden Anniversary: 50 Years of Plant Science Exploration and Discovery Imagine a Gordon Conference crossed with a family reunion and you will have a pretty good idea of what it was like at the recent 50th year anniversary celebration of the Michigan State University (MSU) Department of Energy (DOE)-funded Plant Research Laboratory (PRL). … Read more
ASPB collaborates with www.PlantingScience.org, a learning community where scientists provide online mentoring to student teams in middle school through undergraduate settings so students can design and think through their own inquiry projects. Scroll to the end of this post for an impressive list of who is doing what. The fall 2015 online meeting space was … Read more
Normally, our Friday posts highlight plants featured in the news over the past week, but this week we take a short break to make an appeal for your thoughts on the most notable and newsworthy plant-related events, resources, breakthroughs and headline makers of the past year. Here are the stories we featured last year as … Read more
Plants that do the unexpected or that don’t conform to stereotype command attention and serve as portals to the diversity of the plant kingdom. Litter-trapping plants have an unusual and interesting strategy for obtaining nutrients. Zona and Christenhusz (2015), writing in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, describe plants that have evolved specialized adaptations … Read more
Metabolism is a widely-used term. It is used colloquially, as in, “My metabolism slowed down once I hit 40,” a usage that considers metabolism as a black box and focuses on its energetic inputs and outputs. Or, there’s the single-reaction view of metabolism, as in, “He doesn’t metabolize alcohol very well.” This view underpins the … Read more
Dear Colleagues, As you know, there is substantial fear of GMO technology both within commercial and public spheres. Recently, companies like Chipotle and initiatives such as the Non-GMO Project (representing over 4,500 non-GMO brands) have cited a petition of 300 scientists that claim there is no consensus regarding the scientific safety of GMOs. A group of scientists and myself have organized a petition … Read more
This post is part of the Recognizing our Authors series. Jorge Casal The Plant Cell, Plant Physiology Jorge Casal undertook his early studies at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), where he completed his MSc in 1987, before moving to the University of Leicester (UK) where he completed his PhD in 1989. He is now professor at UBA, … Read more
*Note that we use the term biohacking as it has been used since 1988 to refer to DIY biology (Strange, 1988). More recently biohacking has been used also to refer to strategies to enhance the human body through wearable technology and nutritional supplements. Imagine a typical industrial process – say the production of gasoline or … Read more
The New York Times published the following letter to the editor from ASPB on October 30, 2015. ASPB’s letter was in response to the October 24th article by Mark Lynas, the political director for the Cornell Alliance for Science. In his piece, Lynas laments that due to “Europe’s Coalition of the Ignorant, we are witnessing … 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 October’s issue of The Plant Cell. Suzanne Gerttula, featured author of Transcriptional and Hormonal Regulation of Gravitropism of Woody Stems in Populus Current Position: Volunteer Scientist, US Forest Service, Davis CA. Education: … Read more
This week we feature an article published by Stenberg et al in Trends in Plant Science that describes the potential benefits of optimizing crops for biocontrol of pests. It is difficult to estimate the true costs of herbivore damage to crop plants, but it is clearly in the billions of dollars; much more when pesticide … Read more
Recognizing our Authors is a regular blog series that profiles ASPB’s most highly cited authors. Recently, we’ve been profiling first authors of Plant Cell papers that are selected for In Brief summaries. Here we present the first-author profiles from September’s issue of The Plant Cell. Jonathan Flowers, featured author of Whole-Genome Resequencing Reveals Extensive Natural … Read more
This post is part of the Recognizing our Authors series. Inhwan Hwang The Plant Cell, Plant Physiology Inhwan Hwang received his BS and MS degrees from the Department of Chemistry, Seoul National University, in 1977–1981 and 1981–1983, respectively, and his PhD degree (molecular biology, adviser: Chi-Bom Chae) from the Department of Biochemistry University of North … Read more
This post is part of the Recognizing our Authors series. Olivier Van Aken The Plant Cell, Plant Physiology Olivier Van Aken obtained his PhD at Ghent University (Belgium) in the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB, Plant Systems Biology). He then moved to the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology at The University of … Read more
Scientists have long dreamed of the ability to make targeted genomic changes: precise and specific alterations in an organism’s DNA to affect its phenotype. Recently, this dream has become a reality through the discovery and engineering of nucleases that can be targeted to precise genomic locations. Double-strand breaks produced by targeted nucleases can induce mutations … Read more
This post is part of the Recognizing our Authors Series. Chris Carrie The Plant Cell, Plant Physiology Chris Carrie received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Western Australia in 2005. He then went on to obtain his PhD in 2011 working at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Biology located at the University … Read more
