NEWS FROM
PHYSIOLOGIA PLANTARUM
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Published monthly on behalf of SPPS by Wiley-Blackwell.
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Climate change causes greenhouse gas emission by plants
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Global warming seems to be self-sustaining by making plants emit the potent greenhouse gas, methane (CH4), while simultaneously reducing their assimilation of CO2. This conclusion was obtained by Mirwais M. Qaderi and David M. Reid from University of Calgary, Canada, who tested methane emission and several growth parameters from six crop species grown under various environmental conditions. An increase in temperature from 24/20 °C (day/night) to 30/26 °C led to a 15% increase in methane emission, while the effect of water stress, which will accompany global warming in many regions, increased emission of the greenhouse gas by 22%. The figures are average measurements from faba bean, sunflower, pea, canola, barley and wheat. Under ambient conditions the six crops emitted between 85 (barley) and 170 (pea) ng methane per g dry weight per hour. At the same time, the higher temperature caused CO2 assimilation to decrease 27%, while water stress reduced CO2 assimilation by 31%. The researchers will now investigate how elevated CO2 levels affect methane emission in order to get a better picture of how global warming can turn plants into greenhouse gas contributors.
Read full article free: Qaderi & Reid (October 2009) Physiologia Plantarum 137: 139-147
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NEWS IN BRIEF
FROM OTHER JOURNALS
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Amber Predates Conifers
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Most fossile amber originates from resin secreted by coniferous gymnosperms in the early Cretaceous about 150 million years ago (MYA), while some of the earliest specimens dates back to Triassic at 220 MYA. However, Bray and Anderson from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, USA have now discovered amber in an Illinois coal seam, which is stratigraphically dated to ~320 MYA. This is of particular interest since true conifers did not evolve until around 10 million years later. Moreover the ancient amber is chemically more similar to resin from modern angiosperms than it is to resin from modern gymnosperms and most other fossile amber. The findings suggest that different biosynthetic pathways to produce complex polyterpenoid resins have been retained in both gymnosperms and angiosperms through several major extinction events and over 300 million years of evolution.
Source: Bray & Anderson (2 October 2009) Science 326: 132-134
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Shedding light on protein-protein interactions
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A new technology called light-activated dimerization (LAD) can artificially induce protein hetero- and homodimerization in live cells using light. LAD has been developed by Ricardo Dolmetsch from Stanford University School of Medicine, USA. The technology takes advantage of two proteins, GI and FKF1, that control flowering of Arabidopsis thaliana by light dependent binding to each other. Construction of protein tags bearing the light responsive elements of GI and FKF1 allowed the researchers to port the system to mammalian cells. In an initial experiment using mouse fibroblasts, GI was labeled with the fluorescent protein mCherry and tagged to the cell membrane, whereas FKF1 was labelled with YFP and located to the cytoplasm. After 5 minutes of illumination with 450 nm blue light, however, a substantial amount of FKF1-YFP translocated to the membrane. Using LAD, the researchers were able to induce physiological responses with light by fusing the tags to proteins required for the local formation of cytoskeletal projections (lamellipodia) on the cells. GI and FKF1 were also fused to the DNA binding domain of Gal4 and the transactivation domain of VP16, respectively, creating a light-activated gene transcription system.
Source: Yazawa et al (4 October 2009) Nature Biotechnology doi:10.1038/nbt.1569
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NEW: Post open positions and meetings on the SPPS homepage
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You can access the new sections from the SPPS homepage under the 'Open Positions' and 'Meetings & Links' tabs. From www.spps.fi
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Two exciting new features on the SPPS homepage allows the plant community to share information on open positions and forthcoming meetings. The new sections - Open Positions and Meetings & Links - list available research positions and forthcoming meetings in all fields of plant biology, respectively, so you can easily browse through them and find the information, that is right for you.
The new sections are not limited to those who are looking for a new job or a meeting to go to. You can also post your own open positions or meetings and share them with colleagues all over the world. These new features make it extremely easy to recruit the best candidates and to attract a crowd for your meeting or conference. Posting a new open position or meeting is a breeze and below you can see how you can do it in just a few, simple steps.
Read more.... |
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New procedures for collecting SPPS membership fee
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New members can sign up for SPPS membership on the homepage. From members.spps.fi
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SPPS will now change to a system in which the membership fee for the following year is collected beforehand. That is why we start reminding you about the SPPS membership fee of 2010 already in October. You will get an email with a link to your membership pages so the renewal of the membership will be easy. On the Members section of the SPPS homepage you can renew your membership if you are already a member or you can sign up to become a member of SPPS. Signing up is easy and your membership will come into effect as soon as we have received your payment.
The membership fee for 2010 is only 30 € or 150 € including a full years subscription to our international journal Physiologia Plantarum. Additional benefits include:- Free SPPS newsletter four times a year
- Discounts on registration fees to SPPS Congresses
- Possibilities of obtaining travel grants
- An electronic membership directory
You can see your options as a member of SPPS on the Members section on the SPPS homepage.
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Welcome to the 6th SPPS PhD Student Conference
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The next SPPS PhD conference will take place on an island outside Helsinki. From www.phd-spps.com
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The organising committee of the 6th SPPS PhD student conference welcomes all plant biology PhD students to Helsinki to join a high quality scientific programme and enthusiastic atmosphere, meet the top scientists of plant biology, and to tell about your own studies and recent results.
The next SPPS PhD student conference will be held during 2-5 September 2010 in Espoo in the Finnish-Swedish Cultural Centre Hanasaari located in an island just few minutes outside of Helsinki. The programme is structured so that there are named sessions covering more or less all fields of plant biology. In every session there is a keynote speaker, after which students take the arena. The four-day meeting offers a great opportunity to have discussions with the leading plant scientist and to see the variety of methods and aims of PhD projects by the other participants. A panel discussion on "Life after a PhD" and a talk by Vaughan Hurry (editor-in-chief of Physiologia Plantarum) on "About getting published" will also be organized.
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Father of the Green Revolution has died
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Norman Borlaug realized that adequate food is only the first requisite for a decent and humane life. From raymondpronk.wordpress.com
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The American agronomist Norman Borlaug passed away on September 12, 95 years old. Borlaug was deemed the father of the Green Revolution that began in 1945 and transformed agriculture in many parts of the World. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for securing food supply in developing countries through his efforts to develop high yielding and robust crops. The Green Revolution led to substantial increases in food production - e.g. the wheat harvest tripled in developing countries from 1950 to 2000 - and is credited for saving millions of people from starvation.
The Green Revolution included a variety of technologies like breeding, pesticides, irrigation and fertilizers that roughly equally attributed to the increased and more stable yield. Norman Borlaug's initial work was carried out in Mexico, where he came in 1944 to head a newly established wheat research programme. His focus was on breeding for shorter cultivars that would not lodge (i.e. when tall, thin stalks bent over in wind or rain) and where photosynthates would be channelled to the grain instead of being invested in stalk production.
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Scandinavian research institute:
Department of Photochemistry and Molecular Science, Uppsala University, Sweden
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Mimicking and manipulation of natural photosynthesis can be a new source of energy. From www.fotomol.uu.se
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Photosynthesis and other photochemical reactions are key to most activities at the Department of Photochemistry and Molecular Science at Uppsala University in Sweden. Artificial photosynthesis is the common theme that connects the approximately 50 scientists - 15 senior scientists, 10 postdocs and 20 PhD students - who are engaged in a number of highly interdisciplinary project groups looking at the chemical processes that will ultimately be required to harvest solar energy in a form that can be readily used by mankind.
The overall objective is to produce molecular hydrogen and to this end two different approaches are taken. One is to utilize the cyanobacteria Nostoc punctiforme, that are naturally able to synthesize hydrogen under nitrogen starving conditions, and grow genetically manipulated and more efficient versions of this microorganism in bioreactors. The other approach is to mimic the biological processes and utilize them in light-driven artificial systems where synthetic catalysts will produce hydrogen.
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