NEWS FROM
PHYSIOLOGIA PLANTARUM
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Published monthly on behalf of SPPS by Wiley-Blackwell.
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Arabidopsis get excited
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Action potentials, i.e. rapid and transient changes of the membrane potential that travel over long distances, are not unique to animals. Several plants exploit them for various purposes: capturing insects in the carnivorous Venus flytrap, rapid movement of leaves in Mimosa and triggering of a systemic response following injure in tomato. However, action potentials in plants have not been thoroughly studied due to the lack of a suitable and reproducible model system. Now Swiss scientists propose Arabidopsis thaliana as such a model. Excitation by electrodes in the distal part of the leaf caused reproducible action potentials that travelled down through the petiole at a speed of 1.2 mm/s.
Read full article free: Favre & Agosti (October 2007) Physiologia Plantarum 131: 263-272
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NEWS IN BRIEF
FROM OTHER JOURNALS
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Potatoes highlight the plant-fungi relationship
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Source: Drissner et al (12 October 2007) Science 318: 265-268
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Recipe for better and sustainable rice
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Source: Zhang (1 October 2007) PNAS doi:10.1073/pnas.0708013104
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More speakers announced for the SPPS PhD conference
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Transgenic Arabidopsis that turn red in the presence of explosives will be presented at the SPPS PhD conference. Photo by Henrik Freek.
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A couple more speakers have been announced for the 5th biannual SPPS PhD conference that will take place January 24-27 2008 at Haslev Højskole 60 km south of Copenhagen. It is Professor Heribert Hirt from University of Vienna, Austria, who will deliver the keynote presentation on the topic Abiotic and Biotic Stress. Heribert Hirt makes extensive use of Arabidopsis mutants to investigate perception and transduction of stress signalling as well as programmed cell death and other stress related responses.
The other new speaker is Dr. Edgar Peiter from University of York, UK. He recently published a Nature paper on the role of Ca2+-activated ion channels in germination and stomatal movement, and at the conference the will deliver the keynote speech on the topic Transport and Signalling.
Also new to the programme is a speech under the Applied Methods section about Landmine reporter system in plants. It will be delivered by Agnieszka Janina Zygadlo, Denmark, who is working for the start-up biotech company Aresa that have developed the proprietary RedDetect plants for landmine detection.
You can register and read more about the conference on its official homepage.
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