Corvallis USDA ARS participates in International Fascination of Plants Day

The USDA ARS Corvallis, Oregon stations participated in International Fascination of Plants Day (FoPD) on June 18, 2016. This activity was launched under the umbrella of the European Plant Science Organisation (ESPO) in cooperation with the American Society of Plant Biologists. The goal of FoPD is to show all the different ways plants play roles … Read more

Advancing crop transformation in the era of genome editing

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

NSF to Update Merit Review Procedures – Impact on Broader Impacts?

NSF is offering a draft of a new Proposal and Award Policies Procedure Guide. The guide is expected to ‘go live’ in January 2017.  An active leader in the National Alliance for Broader Impacts recently noted that this proposed guide has some subtle yet rather interesting changes in the merit review wording. The biggest question … Read more

The Ethylene Receptor of a Cyanobacterium

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