Plants and Pipettes

There is an important part in recording a podcast and that is hitting the record button. As one of us missed that crucial input for this week’s episode, the sound is a bit… not great. Don’t worry though, the stories we tell are making up ten-fold for the lack audio quality. We talk about how scientists developed a way to use soap bubbles to pollinate plants! 

Check out Esther Odekunle and Angela Saini on instagram!

Xi Yang and Eijiro Miyako, Soap Bubble Pollination, iScience, 2020

Sciencemag story

• The SPPS PhD Student Conference 2020 has been moved online!
• Petamorphosis I
• Petamorphosis II
• Charles Dicken’s omen
• Mowing once a month can greatly boost the number of insects on a lawn
• Follow up on potted plants in opera house
• Consumer acceptance of novel foods 
• Are trees making wind as well as rain? A controversial theory mixed with inherent cultural differences leads to a standoff between Russian physicists and Western climate modelers
• Corona misinformation and how scientists help to fight it
• Black women scientists missing from textbooks, study shows
• Gas leak turns out to be a Durian

If you have more questions, send them our way! 

All views are our own. If you want to comment or correct anything we said, leave a comment under this post or reach out to us via twitter, facebook or instagram.

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

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First things first: Black Lives Matter. After a short break, we’re back with a new episode, we first address the issue at hand of police brutality against people of colour and what it means to us as white plant scientists. To provide a little diversion from the horrors of the current situation of the world, we also talk about our favourite science and plant related fun facts.

10 Things to do as a white person in academia

#BlackInTheIvory

Video by Jane Elliott on being treated as a black person

Last Week Tonight on Defunding the Police

Human research is WEIRD, animal research is STRANGE. We propose that plant science is CRINGE: too reliant on Col-0, lacking Reproducibility, at risk of accumulating mutations from In-breeding, not publishing Negative Results, ignoring the impact of Germs on plant biology, and excluding Ecology from mechanistic explanations

Diego the tortoise returned home

It doesn’t matter where you keep your tomatoes (at least for their taste)

Kathy Sullivan went to space and to the deepest point on Earth

Carbon nanotube sensors for plants

A concert for plants

Crops on mars

Elvis worm

Sharing publications on twitter boosts the citation count 4-fold

Check out awkwardbotany.com!!!!

Corvids are very smart because of extended childhood

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

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It’s the 50th episode! Instead of our usual routine, we play a game of fake, fake, truth and answer your listener questions. Tag along for a fun special episode!

We skipped the regular structure and instead tried some fun things. Here are the links:

• Why are plants not black
• Black plants
• True Story 1: Unleashing meiotic crossover in crops
• True Story 2: Evolutionary arms race between flowers and insects
• True Story 3: Antisense silencing of enzyme to change flower colour
• True Story 4: Epigenetic summer memory in poplar
• True Story 5: Using cyanobacteria to create electrical current

If you have more questions, send them our way! 

All views are our own. If you want to comment or correct anything we said, leave a comment under this post or reach out to us via twitter, facebook or instagram.

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

Support Us!

This week, we’re talking about cowpeas and how they grow in arid regions, the contribution of Georgiana Simpson to Black Rights in the US, and the effect of humor on information retention. Plus so much more! 

Joram’s favourite plant is Cowpea Vigna unguiculata, also called black eyed pea

Tegan presents the life and work of Georgiana Simpson.

Joram presents the humor effect

Tegan has a great PhD project idea: Looking for life in weird places. There are microbes that divide only every hundred years and feed isotopes

Plant biologist picked to lead U.K. research funding agency. It’s Ottoline Leyser.

Did global emissions drop more than 5%? Yes, briefly in early April, down to -17%. This was however a very short-lived drop. In total in 2020, the drop will be around 5%. 

The bumper Toby Morris & Siouxsie Wiles Covid-19 box set 

Bird and Moon cartoons

Joram is as good as Tegan when it comes to knowing things about Eucalyptus
Can you beat our score of 7/10?

United States relaxes rules for biotech crops

Fidget spinners to detect UTI (nature paper). Here is a popular science article without a paywall. 

Injectable drug that prevents HIV infection

Joram’s (German) podcast on vaccination: aha! planthropology podcast episode with Abby Morrison on storytelling in science communication and the bane of jargon

All views are our own. If you want to comment or correct anything we said, leave a comment under this post or reach out to us via twitter, facebook or instagram.

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

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This week, we’re diving into a science paper that was hard to miss. It’s all about creating artificial photosynthesis using spinach chloroplasts. We also talk about our favourite genome duplication events and news in the world of science.

Paper of the week: Miller, T. E., Beneyton, T., Schwander, T., Diehl, C., Girault, M., McLean, R., … Erb, T. J. (2020). Light-powered CO 2 fixation in a chloroplast mimic with natural and synthetic parts. Science, 368(6491), 649–654. 

Also check out this article about the paper

@CatharticOutlet asked us what our favourite genome duplication event is. Joram’s is strawberries. This paper talks about the octoploid strawberry genome.

Congratulations Australia on ignoring science and investing in coal

Bad news: native guava species in Australia at the brink of extinction due to an invasive fungal disease

Wuhan is drawing up plans to test all 11 million residents

The Inquiry Podcast on Germany’s response to Corona

Moths are friends

New names for viruses

Dandelion seeds fly because of a vortex created by the shape of their fluff. Really cool video!

Plant hormone shelf

Awkward botany blog and zine “Dispersal Stories”

How mint became catmint

Can CRISPR give us allergen free cats? (maybe)

All views are our own. If you want to comment or correct anything we said, leave a comment under this post or reach out to us via twitter, facebook or instagram.

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

Support Us!

It’s time for all our segments! We talk weird chewing gum, South African botanists, biases and answer your questions. Do trees still breathe when they lose their foliage? 

Tegan’s favourite plant is Pistacia lentiscus because it’s used to make Mastic, a type of chewing gum. Also check out how chewing gum is made.

Joram presents the life and work of Harriet Margaret Louisa Bolus (1877-1970). Also check out the paper on the contribution of women to naming species. 

Tegan talks about how we only care about victims that we can identify.

We are answering your questions! The first one is from Apple Chew Yen Peng

Do trees still ‘breathe’ without leaves in winter??

Trees don’t breathe as much in winter. Check out this article on the matter.

Science Alphabet

Science and Objectivity

Scite.ai

Carbon emissions during the crisis

Tasmanian devils saved?

Hummingbird drone and monarch butterflies

New way to fight malaria

Nathan sewed cool pockets

Decided to learn sewing today and took inspiration from @plantspipettes to make this pocket belt for @nahtalix. Two functional pockets for if your trousers don’t have any. #Creative pic.twitter.com/RI9UldOd95

Bubble tea game

Dinosaur cats

Rule of Three Podcast

All views are our own. If you want to comment or correct anything we said, leave a comment under this post or reach out to us via twitter, facebook or instagram.

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

Support Us!

We’re back. We were never really gone. We had just hurt our individual faces and now they’re in good enough shape to drag them in front of the microphones. This week, we talk about coffee, rat spines and glow-in-the-dark plants. Keep your faces intact and enjoy!

Bing Cheng, Heather E Smyth, Agnelo Furtado, Robert J Henry, Slower development of lower canopy beans produces better coffee, Journal of Experimental Botany, , eraa151

The ABCD meeting framework:
All continents
Balanced Gender
Carbon transport
Diverse backgrounds

Glow-in-the-dark plants

“nobody will have scary rat spine hands”

Tomato body horror

Penguin debauchery

National Theater at home

Cat vs control experiment

All views are our own. If you want to comment or correct anything we said, leave a comment under this post or reach out to us via twitter, facebook or instagram.

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

Support Us!

Grab your top hat and ball gown, it is time to get fancy! This week, we dress up and talk about favourite plants, great scientists and all sorts of things that moved us in the last week.

Joram’s favourite plant are all plants in the genus Schlumbergera

Tegan presents the life and work of Maria Sibylla Merian. Don’t forget to check out Fieldwork in fancy dresses!

Joram is under the illusion of control

Quarantine machine

Researchers figured out the Nicotiana benthamiana genome

Corona Zombies

Some good news episode 2

Go out and identify plants to get credits. Blog post.

Disgusting Hornworms

Look at cute turtles

PET degrading enzyme

Hugh Jackman dodged a Cats shaped bullet. Also check out Lindsay Ellis’ review of Cats

All views are our own. If you want to comment or correct anything we said, leave a comment under this post or reach out to us via twitter, facebook or instagram.

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

Support Us!

We hope you’re doing well despite all the trouble in the world right now. This week, we have an exciting paper for you that dives deep into the world of proteins in Arabidopsis. It’s a milestone in plant research and we hope we can share our excitement with you.

Mergner, J., Frejno, M., List, M. et al. Mass-spectrometry-based draft of the Arabidopsis proteome. Nature 579, 409–414 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2094-2

Nature’s guides to great opening sentences

Plant daddy podcast on quarantine friendly plant projects

Pavement plant descriptions

How to make podcasts sound better

Planting trees with no plan is potentially harmful

Pleistocene park: Link 1, Link 2, Link 3

What can your PhD supervisor do for you  (Study on biorxiv)

wild goats roaming the streets

3D printed pipette tip loader

Cats can get the corona virus, but there is no reason to panic

All views are our own. If you want to comment or correct anything we said, leave a comment under this post or reach out to us via twitter, facebook or instagram.

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

Support Us!

In times of need here we are to deliver another vital ration of exciting plant facts, bread talk and cat news. No paper this week, instead we’re talking about ostriches, shrubs and palm research.

Tegan’s favourite plant is Forsythia, a yellow shrub that doesn’t contain lactose.

Joram presents the life and work of Natalie Uhl.

Ostriches don’t stick their head in the sand and this bias might or might not be true.

This guy used ancient yeast to bake Egyptian bread. He also went out to collect wild yeast in the forest.

Some updates on Corona

Tegan knows a cool word and it’s Panjandrum.

An Australian astrophysicist put magnets up his nose until he ran out of magnets.

Cats are calmed by cat-specific music

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

Support Us!