🌻 The Week in Botany December 4, 2023

I spent quite a bit of time out of the office this week. Instead, I was working in Thame, the murder capital of Oxfordshire, which might come as a surprise to fans of Inspector Morse. If your viewing habits don’t include daytime murder mysteries, then you might be more interested in Steve Long’s talk, Can we hack photosynthesis to feed the world? His TED talk is now live.

I haven’t finalised my plans for December yet. At the moment I expect December 18 to be the last newsletter of the year, but there’s a small chance I might have to make December 11 the last of the year. If you have an announcement you want me to pass on, emailing me sooner rather than later is a good idea. Until next week, take care.

Alun (webmaster@botany.one)

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News & Views

Singapore plants the seeds for a green revolution to turn city state into a garden
Singapore’s government has a goal to plant 1 million new trees by 2030, so in the future no citizen should live more than a 10-minute walk from a park. Hundreds of kilometres of routes will connect the various green spaces directly with each other under the city state’s ‘Green Plan 2030’.

Americans love avocados. It’s killing Mexico’s forests.
First the trucks arrived, carrying armed men toward the mist-shrouded mountaintop. Then the flames appeared, sweeping across a forest of towering pines and oaks.

Housebuilders in England may be made to look after trees they plant
Minister says aftercare must be included in targets, after concerns from woodland experts that many trees are dying.

Study finds urban waterfowl are important seed dispersers for native and alien plants
Our park ponds typically hold good numbers of mallards, and urban grassy areas often hold concentrations of geese. In the UK, Canada Geese are an abundant and widespread alien species, well known for fouling parks with their faeces. Until now, no attention had been paid to their role in seed dispersal, a major ecosystem service.

Over 600,000 trees have been planted through Aloy’s Forest project
When Horizon Forbidden West launched, Sony embarked on an environmentalist project to match the game’s themes. Recently, we got an update concerning what the project has achieved.

Homeowner in dispute with neighbors on whether or not his plants are weeds or flowers
A homeowner in Fort Lupton is preparing to go to court after a dispute with his neighbors on whether or not his plants are weeds or flowers.

How food and agriculture contribute to climate change
Feeding the world is a big job, and the effort produces billions of mets of emissions of greenhouse gases each year - around a third of the global total. Despite the fact that food is a big climate problem, very little has been done so far to address it.

California native plants are not our only choice for drought-tolerant landscapes
The December issue of the L.A. Times Plants newsletter.

Nepal villagers step up efforts to save cancer-treating yew trees, but challenges remain
Taxol in yew trees is used in cancer treatment, and has prompted ‘haphazard exploitation’ of the species by pharmaceutical firms. Proper government guidelines are needed to prevent illegal harvesting of yew trees and the species’ long-term survival in the wild, conservationists say.

Santa Barbara Botanic Garden Offers Native Plant Landscaper Course
Starting in February, Santa Barbara Botanic Garden will present a new California Native Plant Landscaper Certification course for working and aspiring landscape professionals.

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Scientific Papers

Modeling early warning signs of possible Amazon Forest dieback (OA)
Deforestation of the Amazon may reach a critical point where abrupt declines in rainfall could cause widespread forest dieback.

Efficient scar-free knock-ins of several kilobases by engineered CRISPR/Cas endonucleases (OA)
In plants and mammals, non-homologous end-joining is the dominant pathway to repair DNA double strand breaks, making it challenging to generate knock-in events. Using a transient assay in Nicotiana benthamiana Schreiber et al. identified two groups of exonucleases, respectively from the Herpes Virus and from the bacteriophage T7 families, that confer up to 38-fold increase in HDR frequencies when fused to Cas9.

Genetically-clustered antifungal phytocytokines and receptor proteins function together to trigger plant immune signaling (OA)
Phytocytokines regulate plant immunity via cell-surface receptors. Populus trichocarpa RUST INDUCED SECRETED PEPTIDE 1 (PtRISP1) exhibits an elicitor activity in poplar, as well as a direct antimicrobial activity against rust fungi. PtRISP1 gene directly clusters with a gene encoding a leucine-rich repeat receptor protein (LRR-RP), that we termed RISP- ASSOCIATED LRR-RP (PtRALR). Lintz et al. used phylogenomics to characterize the RISP and RALR gene families, and functional assays to characterize RISP/RALR pairs.

Border Control: Manipulation of the Host-Pathogen Interface by Perihaustorial Oomycete Effectors ($)
King et al. summarise the diverse mechanisms of perihaustorial effectors from oomycetes and pinpoint pressing questions regarding their role in manipulating host defense and metabolism at the haustorial interface.

Temporal and spatial variations of air-sea CO₂ fluxes and their key influence factors in seagrass meadows of Hainan Island, South China Sea ($)
Data for air-sea CO2 flux for tropical seagrass ecosystems are lacking, which is problematic for constraining global seagrass carbon budgets. Liu et al. sought to address this important data gap for tropical seagrass ecosystems (dominated by Thalassia hemprichii and Enhalus acoroides) from the Hainan Island of South China Sea, while also testing what the main factors driving the variations of air-sea CO2 fluxes are.

Air channels create a directional light signal to regulate hypocotyl phototropism ($)
As seedlings emerge, their embryonic stems unfold and extend as they grow toward light. Phototropin blue light receptors detect the gradient of light, thus allowing the direction of growth to be determined. Nawkar et al. found that mutation of a transporter protein, ABCG5, caused defective seedling phototropism.

Young mixed planted forests store more carbon than monocultures—a meta-analysis (OA)
Although decades of research suggest that higher species richness improves ecosystem functioning and stability, planted forests are predominantly monocultures. To determine whether diversification of plantations would enhance aboveground carbon storage, Warner et al. systematically reviewed over 11,360 publications, and acquired data from a global network of tree diversity experiments.

Protein Phosphorylation Orchestrates Acclimations of Arabidopsis Plants to Environmental pH (OA)
Environment pH (pH_e) is a key parameter dictating a surfeit of conditions critical to plant survival and fitness. To elucidate the mechanisms that recalibrate cytoplasmic and apoplastic pH homeostasis, Jain and Schmidt conducted a comprehensive proteomic/phosphoproteomic inventory of plants subjected to transient exposure to acidic or alkaline pH, an approach that covered the majority of protein-coding genes of the reference plant Arabidopsis thaliana.

Community forest governance and synergies among carbon, biodiversity and livelihoods (OA)
Forest landscape restoration has emerged as a key strategy to sequester atmospheric carbon and conserve biodiversity while providing livelihood co-benefits for indigenous peoples and local communities. Using a dataset of 314 forest commons in human-dominated landscapes in 15 tropical countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, Fischer et al. examine the relationships among carbon sequestered in above-ground woody biomass, tree species richness and forest livelihoods.

Knockout of the sugar transporter OsSTP15 enhances grain yield by improving tiller number due to increased sugar content in the shoot base of rice (Oryza sativa L.) ($)
This study elucidates the mechanism by which knockout of the sugar transporter OsSTP15 enhances grain yield via increasing the tiller number in rice. Li et al. found that OsSTP15 is specifically expressed in the shoot base and vascular bundle sheath of seedlings and encodes a plasma membrane-localized high-affinity glucose efflux transporter. OsSTP15 knockout enhanced sucrose and trehalose-6-phosphate (Tre6P) synthesis in leaves and improved sucrose transport to the shoot base by inducing the expression of sucrose transporters.

SAGA1 and SAGA2 promote starch formation around proto-pyrenoids in Arabidopsis chloroplasts (OA)
Atkinson et al. describe the impact of introducing the Chlamydomonas proteins StArch Granules Abnormal 1 (SAGA1) and SAGA2, which are associated with the regulation of pyrenoid starch biogenesis and morphology. They show that SAGA1 localizes to the proto-pyrenoid in engineered Arabidopsis plants, which results in the formation of atypical spherical starch granules enclosed within the proto-pyrenoid condensate and adjacent plate-like granules that partially cover the condensate, but without modifying the total amount of chloroplastic starch accrued.

Early Phosphorylated Protein 1 is required to activate the early rhizobial infection program (OA)
Ferrer-Orgaz et al. investigate the role of the Medicago truncatula Early Phosphorylated Protein 1 (MtEPP1) in the nodule formation signaling pathway triggered by perception of lipo-chitooligosaccharides (Nod Factors) secreted by nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria. They find MtEPP1 is phosphorylated early in this pathway and is required for proper nodule formation, likely via regulation of calcium signaling.
(Summary by Claude.ai, because while lots of people understand this paper and are sharing it, I’m not one of them and there’s no simple abstract)

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Careers

Assistant Professor- Tenure Track - Sustainable Biology and Environmental Science. New Jersey
The successful candidate will develop a research program that involves both undergraduate and graduate students and can be externally funded. The position includes teaching biology major required courses, ecology focused courses, as well as graduate courses within their area of expertise. Faculty are also expected to mentor Graduate students' research; offer experiential research opportunities with advising to undergraduate students; and provide services to the department, college, and university.

Assistant Professor of Landscape Horticulture and Design (Continuing Track), Delaware
The University of Delaware (UD) Department of Plant and Soil Sciences seeks outstanding candidates for a 9-month continuing track position of Assistant Professor of Landscape Horticulture and Design to begin Fall 2024. This position is 95% teaching, and 5% service.

Assistant or Associate Professor of Biology, Tenure-Track, Virginia
The University of Lynchburg invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track position in botany or plant biology at the Assistant or Associate Professor level beginning in the 2024-25 academic year. The candidate should demonstrate exceptional potential as a teacher and scholar who can contribute to our undergraduate programs and complement existing departmental strengths. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in plant biology and will be able to teach departmentally-designed introductory core major courses, a 200-level course in plant biology, and additional courses in the major core and in the candidate’s area of expertise. In addition, candidates should be able to mentor students in undergraduate research projects.

Lecturer in Plant Science, Edinburgh
This post will suit someone who wants to address their own major research questions in plant science, who can promote and facilitate translation of fundamental research, and who can contribute to inspired learning in a world-class institution with a strongly collaborative and cross-disciplinary ethos. Working in a supportive environment, you will have the potential to rapidly develop an international reputation for research at the forefront of Plant Science. We encourage translational impact and links with industry. You will also be an enthusiastic and innovative teacher and will deliver both undergraduate and masters teaching in this area, together with research postgraduate training.

PhD Studentship: How Did Seed Plants Create Male and Female Sexes? The Evolutionary Origins of Heterospory, Birmingham
This project will attempt to answer this question using primarily ‘wet lab’-based experiments: - Characterise the process of meiosis in a homosporous fern by advance microscopy for the first time. To do so, we will use different DNA staining techniques, a BrdU time course and immunolocalization of meiotic specific proteins using antibodies raised from plants.

PhD Studentship: Rooting the Northern Forest: soil and woodland dynamics across northern England, Hull
This project will reconstruct the dynamics of both woodland and soil in a case study area, the Northern Forest zone in Northern England - an excellent study area for exploring the long-term trajectories of soils in the temperate deciduous forest zone and the extent to which studying past and present woodland can effectively inform planning for planting new woodlands appropriate for the soils and climates. The proposed Northern Forest region offers potential for effective collaboration and application of findings.

Research Associate in Molecular Plant Reproduction, Cardiff
This BBSRC-funded research project aims to test if miRNAs can be involved in the communication between pistil and pollen tubes upon pollination in flowering plants, using Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis) as our model system. To this end, synthetic genes will be specifically expressed in either pollen or pistil, enabling us to study the putative exchange of noncoding RNAs affecting pollen tube expression and growth in situ. The work will involve the development of several constructs, the production and analysis of transgenic Arabidopsis plants and imaging the expression of fluorescent reporters in tissues. Secondly, transcript libraries will be generated from pollinated wild-type and transgenic Arabidopsis pistils, at several time points after pollination, to study changes in coding and regulatory transcripts.