Plants and Pipettes

Hello again! Do you want to know about a potentially organic alternative to glyphosate and the recycling system of organelle DNA? You came to the right place podcast! We also have a new favourite plant and some fun stuff for you!

Joram’s paper: Brilisauer, K., Rapp, J., Rath, P., Schöllhorn, A., Bleul, L., Weiß, E., … Forchhammer, K. (2019). Cyanobacterial antimetabolite 7-deoxy-sedoheptulose blocks the shikimate pathway to inhibit the growth of prototrophic organisms. Nature Communications, 10(1), 545.

Tegan’s paper: Takami, T., Ohnishi, N., Kurita, Y., Iwamura, S., Ohnishi, M., Kusaba, M., … Sakamoto, W. (2018). Organelle DNA degradation contributes to the efficient use of phosphate in seed plants. Nature Plants, 4(12), 1044–1055.

Joram’s favourite plant is Magnolia!

Lil Bub’s genome is here!

Dispute between German universities and publishing houses: project DEAL. Please make sure to always pay for your papers and not to fall for sci-hub.

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Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

New Friday, new Podcast! In this episode, we jump right into the study of fern stomata and resurrection plants in the desert. And we have a #plantsound today!

As always, let us know in the comments if you have any questions or thoughts on the topics we discuss. Have fun!

Joram’s paper: Hydraulics Regulate Stomatal Responses to Changes in Leaf Water Status in the Fern Athyrium filix–femina, Amanda A. Cardoso, Joshua M. Randall, Scott A. M. McAdam, Plant Physiology Feb 2019, 179 (2) 533-543; DOI: 10.1104/pp.18.01412

Message us if you know what the deal is with ferns and their epidermis!

Tegan’s paper: Chloroplast breakdown during dehydration of a homoiochlorophyllous resurrection plant proceeds via senescence-like processes. Charuvi, D., Nevo, R., Aviv-Sharon, E., Gal, A., Kiss, V., Shimoni, E., … Reich, Z. (2019). Environmental and Experimental Botany, 157(August 2018), 100–111. DOI: 10.1016/j.envexpbot.2018.09.027

Joram’s favourite plant: Viscia orobus, and the ancient paper studying its chromosome structure.

Microjets from Citrus fruit (PNAS article) and on Science Breaker and a video of citrus flame throwers

The sound of a hoop pine cone disintegrating:

The rather delightful sound of a Hoop Pine cone disintegrating. Enjoy! #Araucaria #Rainforest #PlantBank #plantsounds pic.twitter.com/BgtpoAF5Xl

Follow us on twitter, instagram and facebook! If you like our podcast, review us on iTunes!

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

All good things come in fours: the number of legs on a cat, how often you should brush your teeth per day and the number of weeks in a month in February on a non-leap year. Oh, and this podcasts current episode count until the next episode comes.

This week, we talk about seed germination and junk DNA. And pretty pictures, which always works well on an audio medium.

Tegan’s paper: Wei Ma et al., Mitochondrial small heat shock protein mediates seed germination via thermal sensing, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Mar 2019, 116 (10) 4716-4721; DOI:10.1073/pnas.1815790116

Joram’s paper: Jianbo Xie et al., Evolutionary origins of pseudogenes in plants, The Plant Cell Feb 2019, tpc.00601.2018; DOI: 10.1105/tpc.18.00601

Cool photos of UV light induced fluorescence photography by Craig P. Burrows

Tegan’s paper on the effect of team size on scientific success. Wu, L., Wang, D., & Evans, J. A. (2019). Large teams develop and small teams disrupt science and technology. Nature, 566(7744), 378–382. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-0941-9

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Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

Dingdingdingding it’s a new episode of the plants and pipettes podcast! This week, Tegan brought you a paper about how plants recognise their family growing left and right of them. Joram looked at vernalisation and how it is triggered after winter when plants bolt and produce flowers. Enjoy!

Tegan’s paper: Crepy, M. A. and Casal, J. J. (2015), Photoreceptor‐mediated kin recognition in plants. New Phytol, 205: 329-338. doi:10.1111/nph.13040

Joram’s paper: Gibbs, D. J., Tedds, H. M., Labandera, A.-M., Bailey, M., White, M. D., Hartman, S., … Holdsworth, M. J. (2018). Oxygen-dependent proteolysis regulates the stability of angiosperm polycomb repressive complex 2 subunit VERNALIZATION 2. Nature Communications, 9(1), 5438.

Tegan’s favourite plant is Ophioglossumreticulatum which has a very large genome.

The paper on pipettes inspired by plants: Nakamura, K., Hisanaga, T., Fujimoto, K., Nakajima, K., & Wada, H. (2018). Plant-inspired pipettes. Journal of The Royal Society Interface, 15(140), 20170868.

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Our opening music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

Another fortnight, another episode! In episode 2 of the Plant and Pipettes Podcast we explore again two journals from the past months. Joram brought up his favourite topic: urine irrigation of meadows by cows and the resulting nitrogen cycles. Tegan on the other hand talked about research on photorespiration and how scientists found a shortcut that could result in massive increases in crop yield.

Paper 1: Tonn B, Porath I, Lattanzi FA, Isselstein J (2019) Urine effects on grass and legume nitrogen isotopic composition: Pronounced short-term dynamics of δ15N. PLOS ONE 

Paper 2: P.F. South el al., Synthetic glycolate metabolism pathways stimulate crop growth and productivity in the field, Science (2018).

Joram’s favourite plant is Whiteheadia bifolia. This paper explores the pollination by rodents. He found it through this tweet by @thorogoodchris1.

The peculiar leaves and flowers of Whiteheadia bifolia. pic.twitter.com/NNe8KJsmzG

Tegan discovered Golden Bananas.

Follow us on twitter, instagram and facebook! If you like our podcast, review us on iTunes!

Our opening music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

It is done. We recorded our first episode of the Plants and Pipettes Podcast.

What happens if you repeatedly poke a plant in the eye leaf? And what is so exciting about transforming yet another organelle? Listen to this episode and find out!

If you have comments about the things we said, please post them below on plantsandpipettes.com. We’d love to hear your feedback!

• Tegan’s Paper: Quantitative and functional posttranslational modification proteomics reveals that TREPH1 plays a role in plant touch-delayed bolting, Wang et al., PNAS, 2018
• Joram’s Paper: High-efficiency generation of fertile transplastomic Arabidopsis plants, Ruf et al., Nature Plants, 2019
• The previous chloroplast transformation paper from 2017: Efficient Plastid Transformation in Arabidopsis, Yu et al, Plant Physiology, 2017
• DIY 3D printed hand powered centrifuge
• Ultralow-cost electroporator
• Gaurav Byagathvalli on twitter
• Dunning-Kruger on GMO opposition survey

Follow us on twitter, instagram and facebook!

Our opening music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!