Number One (CC BY 2.0) by Ruth Hartnup
A sampling of plant science news from 2018.
For the past six years, I’ve started out the new year here at the How Plants Work blog by taking a look back at the previous year’s plant-related news from my HPW Twitter feed and sharing a few of the “tastier” tidbits, month-by-month.
Since I still find this kind of fun and interesting (and also because it’s currently cold and rainy outside in the Pacific northwest), let’s carry on the tradition….
From Plant Self-Defense To Looking At Plants
- Plant Self-Defense: “When you see brown spots on otherwise healthy green leaves, you may be witnessing a plant’s immune response as it tries to keep a bacterial infection from spreading. Some plants are more resistant to such infections than others, and plant biologists want to understand why.
Salk scientists characterize unusual plant immune response to bacterial infection
- Solving the “Abominable Mystery”?: “Scientists think they have the answer to a puzzle that baffled even Charles Darwin: How flowers evolved and spread to become the dominant plants on Earth.”
How plants conquered the world
- Counting Chromosomes: “Counting is vital in nature. Counting chromosomes is something that most animals, plants and even single-celled organisms need to know how to do to assure viability and to reproduce. Today, a team of geneticists reveals a remarkable mechanism that enables plants to count their chromosomes, solving a century-old mystery.”
Plant scientists solve a century-old mystery about reproduction
- Plant Rapid-Response: “A team of plant scientists examined the processes through which plants are able to pass on information about the external environment from the roots to the new shoots. The results showed that increased soil nutrients leads to a response in stem cells in the shoots in less than 24 hours.”
Plants increase flower production within a day of soil nutrient application
- Reinvigorating Plant Morphology: “Advances in genomics and imaging are reviving a fading discipline.”
The lost art of looking at plants
Next Up: Plant news highlights from February 2018….From sedating plants to a bug-eyed view of flowers.
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