This week's email should look a little different. Some of that is because I've made a few tools to help me format links. The other reason is that, if you have received this by email, we have finally moved to Ghost. There's a post on what the changes mean, but I'm hoping that most of them will go unnoticed.
Unfortunately one you might notice is that this week I'm a little late. I imported the email list at the last minute, so that anyone who had wanted to unsubscribe wouldn't be pestered with another email. This triggered a security alert, because importing a lot of emails could mean the system is about to be abused for spam. The delay is due to clearing that.
I'm glad the switch is done as the first item on the new server is time-sensitive, and I wanted to get it out as soon as possible. Deborah Narh, Jason Hoeksema and colleagues want to know who does or doesn't have the access to omics technologies. They're particularly interested in who doesn't, so they can see where we're missing research opportunities. They're mapping the problem by asking for responses to a survey, but they need answers before the start of March. There are more details here.
I'm not sure what plans I have for this week. My effort has been focussed on getting this done. Whatever happens, there will be another email of the papers and the news stories you’re sharing on Mastodon and Bluesky at what I hope is the usual time next week. Until next time, take care.
Alun (webmaster@botany.one)
On Botany One
Who gets to do ’omics?
What’s the biggest barrier to participating in science: talent or your bank account?
Alun Salt
The Ghost of Botany Future
We’ve moved blogging platform and are squashing bugs and exploring opportunities.
Alun Salt
Also, two puzzles Sudoku Garden and Plant Hunt: Killers.
And last week's Week in Botany, which didn't have a lot in it, because of the work put into the move.
News & Views
A new component of the gravity-sensing pathway, SLQ1, was identified. SLQ1, along with its homolog SETH6, is crucial for proper auxin distribution and shoot gravitropism.
The Georgia Botanical Society is accepting applications for the Marie Mellinger Field Botany Research Award. For more than 20 years, this program has provided small monetary awards to support students, instructors, field botanists, conservation land managers, and conservationists who are conducting field research, conservation projects, and educational programs that focus on Georgia’s native flora.
Wood crane’s-bill (Geranium sylvaticum) has inspired pollination ecology and plant breeding system research. Because it has both male and female flowers, scientists have been particularly interested in how this unique way of breeding has evolved.
Journal of Ecology BlogLandscapes are constantly changing, but true understanding of nature recovery, biodiversity trends, and conservation outcomes often requires long-term ecological data. In this talk, The answer to tomorrow’s question may lie in the past, Dr Keith Kirby explores the value of long-term records in environmental research, using world-renowned Wytham Woods long-term studies as a powerful case study.
Oxford Nature NetworkThe new strain, identified in 2025, has overcome a key resistance gene that was protecting many major UK wheat varieties from yellow rust infection.
NiabThe U.S. EPA’s decision to repeal the Endangerment Finding will limit the government’s ability to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
The Nature ConservancyStudents seeking graduate research scholarships speculate that biology is being disfavored.
From rare specimens to everyday favorites, why these collections are essential for gardeners, scientists, and plant lovers alike.
Australia is home to many talented botanists, many of whom are women. Here are just a few of their stories.
Australian Geographic
For nearly half a millennium, botanists sought the “true” identity of Lignum nephriticum, a mysterious marvel that confounded early modern science.
JSTOR DailyA new study in Japan shows that people value nature in three distinct ways - intrinsic, relational, and instrumental.
Earth.comThis Week in Botany
5 Years Ago: Historical trends in herbarium specimens could cause misleading observations
10 Years Ago: Tracing the roots – stems, leaves, fruits… – of modern botany
15 Years Ago: Radial O2-loss barrier induction and arenchyma formation
Scientific Papers
“Over the last decade, affordable sequencing devices have substantially increased the size of the genomics community by enabling individual research groups to sequence the genomes of plant species of interest. There has also been a quick development of novel tools for sequencing data analysis. Here, we share experiences with plant long-read genomics methods for Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) and provide hands-on guidelines to support newcomers entering plant genomics.”
“Generally, the root mycobiome is dominated by endophytic and mycorrhizal fungi with mutualistic potential to enhance plant fitness. In some cases, however, the distinction between the two biotrophic guilds is challenged by the ability of several endophytic fungi to colonize roots and transfer nutrients to the plants. With more research on harnessing plant–endophyte combinations using a gnotobiotic system, more endophytes endowed with mycorrhizal-like traits have been identified.”
“Interpretations of evolutionary outcomes are limited without incorporation of physiological ecology, and ecophysiological interpretations would benefit from incorporating evolutionary perspectives. Although there has been a rise of studies in the last 20 years between these fields, evolutionary studies that incorporate plant physiology have largely focused on the same traits (e.g., flowering time, specific leaf area), neglecting cellular and developmental traits. This neglect is largely due to the high throughput demands in evolutionary studies and the lack of technological advancements in ecophysiology. However, this bias in measured traits has resulted in limiting our understanding of the evolution of plant form and function. The aim of this synthesis is to offer a comprehensive resource, building upon previous works, for researchers to bridge the gap between ecophysiology and evolutionary ecology.”
“Studies show that there is a correlation between creative problem solving and increased diversity, and plant science cannot afford to lose talented individuals. Here we report on strategies to promote diversity, inclusion, and a sense of belonging for all within plant science. We address ways that institutions, organizations, communities, educators, and individuals can contribute to this needed cultural change.”
“Floral bicolor pigmentation in some cultivars of petunia and dahlia is caused by naturally occurring RNA interference (RNAi). In both species, the chalcone synthase gene is highly expressed only in the pigmented regions of bicolor petals. However, the mechanism by which RNAi is specifically induced in the unpigmented regions remains unknown. To elucidate the mechanism underlying this bicolor pattern formation, we analyzed the dicing activity of Dicer-like 4 (DCL4), an essential enzyme in the RNAi pathway.”
“Calcium-dependent protein kinases (CDPKs) decode cellular calcium transients and play diverse roles in plant growth and stress responses, including immunity. In Arabidopsis thaliana (At, Arabidopsis thereafter), AtCPK28 contributes to immune homeostasis by phosphorylating subgroup IV plant U-box proteins AtPUB22/24/25/26, which target the key immune receptor-like cytoplasmic kinase (RLCK) AtBIK1 for turnover. While this module is conserved in multiple angiosperms, it is unclear if the role of CPK28 in immune homeostasis is conserved more broadly across land plants. Here, we took an evolutionary comparative approach to understand the role of CPK28.”
“Tropical forests play a critical role in the global carbon cycle, but our limited understanding of the physiological sensitivity of tropical forest trees to environmental factors complicates predictions of tropical carbon fluxes in a changing climate. We determined the short-term temperature response of leaf photosynthesis and respiration of seedlings of three tropical tree species from Panama.”
“The growth-defense trade-off is an essential survival strategy for plants under environmental stress. However, how this balance is maintained at the meristematic level remains unclear. Here, we show that wounding of rosette leaves systemically inhibits inflorescence stem growth, associated with reduced cell proliferation in the inner cell layers of the shoot apical meristem (SAM), but not in the apical stem cell domain.”
“More than a century after two introduced pathogens killed billions of American chestnut trees, introgression of resistance alleles from Chinese chestnuts has contributed to the recovery of self-sustaining populations. However, progress has been slow because of the complex genetic architecture of resistance. To better understand blight resistance, we compared reference genomes, gene expression responses, and stem metabolite profiles of the resistant Chinese and susceptible American chestnut species.”
“Phtheirospermum japonicum is a genetic model for parasitic Orobanchaceae, a plant family that includes noxious parasitic weeds from the genera Striga, Orobanche, and Phelipanche (Ishida et al., 2011)... Here, we adapted a virus-mediated delivery system for ultracompact TnpB nucleases, enabling genome editing independently of tissue regeneration or floral dip transformation in the parasitic plant P. japonicum (Nagalakshmi et al., 2025; Weiss et al., 2025).”
“In recent years, new leadership at Twitter has made substantive changes that have resulted in increases in the prevalence of pseudoscience, conspiracy theory, and harassment on the platform, causing many scientists to seek alternatives. Bluesky has been suggested as a good alternative to Twitter, but the phenomenon of academics switching social media platforms has not previously been studied. Here we report on the results of a survey distributed to scientists on Twitter and Bluesky (n = 813). Results overwhelmingly confirm that changes to Twitter have made the social media platform no longer professionally useful or pleasant, and that many scientists have abandoned it in favor of Bluesky.”
In AoBC Publications
- Functional Traits and Elemental Uptake in Urban Coastal Wetland Plants Under Variable Hydrology and Edaphic Conditions 🆓
- Validation of root hair upscaling in rhizosphere solute transport models 🆓
- Fire-driven fine-scale diversity of Cerrado flowering plants and their bee pollinators in space and time 💰
- Phenotypic selection in weedy radish and its bidirectional crop–weed hybrids across two contrasting environments 🆓
- Disentangling the contribution of trait plasticity to improve the productivity of a maize-soybean intercrop system for the Midwest, USA 🆓
Careers
You will establish and lead an independent research group to pursue ambitious and innovative research goals.
To enable your research, EMBL-EBI will provide a generous package of core support, including funding for PhD students, bioinformaticians, engineers and postdoctoral researchers. You will also have access to outstanding computational infrastructure including high-performance clusters and GPU compute, no formal teaching responsibilities, and complete academic freedom.
EMBLThe student will be part of a multidisciplinary effort to investigate the anatomical, physical and cellular factors that shape internal root environments. The project will explore how root organisation and environmental conditions combine to influence oxygen availability, and how these internal conditions vary across space and time.
University of NottinghamThe postholder will investigate how internal root environments influence developmental decisions and tissue differentiation, with a particular emphasis on how signalling pathways respond to sustained changes in oxygen availability. The role will contribute to defining how physical and biological features of roots interact to modulate internal conditions and coordinate growth.
University of NottinghamWorking as part of a team led by Prof. Myriam Charpentier, you will explore the molecular mechanisms underlying nuclear calcium oscillation decoding and the enhancement of root legume endosymbiosis. The successful applicant will creatively investigate the dynamics of regulatory networks at the interface of arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis and nitrogen-fixing bacteria colonization using molecular biology, proteomics and bioengineering approaches. They will benefit from a highly interdisciplinary and international environment with outstanding institutional support.
John Innes CentreWe seek to appoint three new academics at the level of Lecturer in the School Biological Sciences (equivalent to Assistant Professor in other Universities). We are interested in supporting applicants to develop internationally outstanding research programmes that will add value to our School strategic research priorities. Evolutionary Biology and understanding the evolution of life; Behavioural and Sensory Ecology and responding to anthropogenic change; Ecology and reversing the biodiversity crisis; Plant Sciences and transforming sustainable food production.
University of BristolThe post holder will plan and deliver a three-year project which includes the planning of surveys, training botanical recorders in survey methodology, organising training/recording events, and the coordination, support and undertaking of surveys, as well as the day-to-day management of the project and reporting to funders. They will also support volunteers in Wales by facilitating other training (for example in plant identification and data management) and encouraging volunteer succession planning, skills development and capacity building.
BSBIThis PhD project aims to study early management interventions during the transition from agriculture to rewilding, with a special focus on the provision of bird habitat and resources, such as seeds and invertebrate abundance. The project takes advantage of the existing long-term ecological monitoring undertaken in 2022 at RSPB’s Wild Saltholme, a 100-ha rewilding project in the Tees Valley.
Teesside UniversityThe Kamoun Lab at The Sainsbury Laboratory (TSL) is seeking a highly motivated postdoctoral researcher or research assistant to join our team. This position focuses on the biology of plant immune receptors and the application of this knowledge to crop disease resistance, with particular emphasis on nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) proteins and their interactions with pathogen virulence effectors.
The Sainsbury LaboratoryThe Natural History Museum Denmark wishes to appoint a Tenure Track Assistant Professor and Curator of Bryology (mosses and allies) with a great vision for natural history museums in a changing world. Duties are divided equally between collection-based research and other museum duties including curation and digitization of the bryophyte collections, research-based teaching and supervision of students, public engagement work, and to act as the museum's liaison with relevant Danish natural history communities.
Natural History Museum DenmarkL’IE mènera des travaux de génétique moléculaire d’Arabidopsis thaliana, de microscopie à haute résolution, d’interaction protéine-protéine, de suivit d’activité de biosenseur fluorescent, d’expression de protéines recombinantes, et de phénotypage de plantes. Soutien technique, logistique et conceptuel d’une équipe multinationale, l’IE travaillera en étroite collaboration avec les doctorants, postdoctorants et ingénieurs de l’équipe et en soutient de leur projet.
CNRSWe are looking for a highly motivated and enthusiastic scientist with excellent knowledge of ecological statistics
with R (e.g. network analysis, structural equation modelling, GLMM, meta-analysis or Bayesian statistics). Applicants
must have a completed university degree (Master's degree) and hold a PhD or are about to complete a PhD in
ecology, biology, agriculture or related disciplines. Candidates should have research experience, e.g. in agroecology,
biodiversity research, community ecology, network analysis, landscape ecology, including a basic understanding of
agricultural landscapes as socio-ecological systems.
University of GöttingenThe Excellence Cluster Future Forests at the University of Freiburg invites applications for a PhD position in functional tree genetics and genome editing. The project aims to establish CRISPR/Cas-based gene editing in poplar to causally dissect the role of epigenetic regulation in stress resilience and stress memory under climate change scenarios. By combining genome editing, epigenome profiling, and quantitative stress phenotyping, the project seeks to identify predictive molecular markers of tree resilience.
University of FreiburgWe will be looking for a PhD candidate in the spring of 2026, with a starting date around September 2026, although there is flexibility there.
You will work within the Marie Curie Doctoral Network AGILE, which is a consortium from scientists all over Europe, dedicated to train the next generation of plant cell biology microscopists.
Important: Only applicants who have not spent more than 12 months in Germany on their studies within the preceding 36 months are eligible.
Heidelberg UniversityThe Next Gen project in close collaboration with the La Trobe node of the Australian Plant Phenomics Network (APPN) requires a data scientist.
La Trobe UniversityThis project aims to quantify how anthropogenic disturbances such as agriculture, forestry, and road construction affect carbon cycling and hydrology in swamp and forested peatlands of southern Québec.
Wetland Resilience Research Group
