Plants and Pipettes

This week, we learn something new: have you heard about apomictic propagation? Well, now you have. We also bring the hottest news from the plant science world.

• Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet | Official Trailer | Netflix 
• Variation of Residual Sexuality Rates along Reproductive Development in Apomictic Tetraploids of Paspalum | HTML 
• Tasting my First Babaco Fruit
• The Many Uses of CRISPR: Scientists Tell All – The New York Times 
• Cellulose photonic pigments | Nature Communications 
• Artificial photosynthesis can produce food without sunshine — ScienceDaily
• A hybrid inorganic–biological artificial photosynthesis system for energy-efficient food production | Nature Food
• New species of alga named for poet Amanda Gorman — ScienceDaily 
• Read the full text of Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem ‘The Hill We Climb’ 
• Ethanol induces heat tolerance in plants by stimulating unfolded protein response | SpringerLink
• The genomic basis of the plant island syndrome in Darwin’s giant daisies | Nature Communications 
•  Scalesia pedunculata – Wikipedia 
• First reported case of a person getting COVID from a cat

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

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We have a lot of questions this week that even we don’t know the answer to. This is your time to shine

• The extinct ‘orchid of the falls’ | Kew 
• Breaking the binary by coming out as a trans scientist
• About Me – Robin Aguilar 
• Women less likely than men to get authorship on scientific publications, analysis finds 
• Female scientists less likely to be given authorship credits, analysis finds | UK news | The Guardian
• Considerations for LGBTQ+ Friendly Field Work | Plantae
• Gaga (plant) – Wikipedia 
• Peecycling: could donating your urine to farmers help feed the world? | Recycling | The Guardian
• Is “Peecycling” the Next Wave in Sustainable Living?
• German: Kollektiv KAnTe Öko-Klo
• Optimisation of a low-cost urine treatment system for resource recovery
• Plants Appear to Be Breaking Biochemistry Rules by Making ‘Secret Decisions’
• Metabolic evidence for distinct pyruvate pools inside plant mitochondria | Nature Plants
• Cloud labs: where robots do the research 
• Golden cats: A never‐ending story! – Abitbol – – Animal Genetics – Wiley Online Library 

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

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Hi! Would you like some cool plant facts? We have a fresh new paper about biofortified tomatoes that give you your daily dose of vitamin D, a new oldest tree and an explanation of why catnip likes to be a cat bed.

• Biofortified tomatoes provide a new route to vitamin D sufficiency | Nature Plants
• Epigenetic features drastically impact CRISPR-Cas9 efficacy in plants  
• New CRISPR-combo boosts genome editing power in plants — ScienceDaily
• ‘Hey, tree. You are my friend’: Assessing multiple values of nature through letters to trees
• Is this the oldest tree in the world? | Live Science
• Engagement with indigenous people preserves local knowledge and biodiversity alike: Current Biology
• Photoreceptors’ gene expression of Arabidopsis thaliana grown with biophilic LED-sourced lighting systems | PLOS ONE
• Research reveals the science behind this plant’s blue berries — ScienceDaily
• Catnip Turns Out to Have a Hidden Effect You Probably Don’t Know About
• Domestic cat damage to plant leaves containing iridoids enhances chemical repellency to pests
• Chewed and Rolled: How Cats Make the Most of Their Catnip High

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

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Would you swap your cat for a praying mantis? What about a nice house plant? This week, we are asking the big questions. Also news from plant science, a new biggest plant has been found and more potent cannabis from Israel.

• Shiso – Wikipedia
• Beast — Aradhita Para
• Telescoping effect – Wikipedia
• Scientists discover ‘biggest plant on Earth’ off Western Australian coast | Environment | The Guardian
• Extensive polyploid clonality was a successful strategy for seagrass to expand into a newly submerged environment 
• Water makes tree branches droop at night — ScienceDaily 
• Boosting THC in cannabis plant using a virus – Green Prophet
• Changes in Cannabis Potency over the Last Two Decades (1995-2014) – Analysis of Current Data in the United States
• Touch signaling and thigmomorphogenesis are regulated by complementary CAMTA3- and JA-dependent pathways
• Molecular phylogenies map to biogeography better than morphological ones | Communications Biology
• Are people swapping their cats and goldfish for praying mantises? New research sheds light on the pet insect market and its implications on biodiversity conservation — ScienceDaily

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

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This week, we’re talking about a cool gene regulatory mechanism that keeps ribosomes busy, the truth behind French lillies and which plants best not to pick.

• Jérémie Makiese – Miss You – Belgium – Official Music Video – Eurovision 2022
• Noise reduction by upstream open reading frames | Nature Plants
• Wu, HW., Fajiculay, E., Wu, JF. et al. Noise reduction by upstream open reading frames. Nat. Plants (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-022-01136-8
• Upstream open reading frame – Wikipedia 
• Stop picking carnivorous penis plants, Cambodian environmental officials plead | Live Science 
• Fleur-de-lis – Wikipedia 
• Making New Climate Data from Old Timber | The New Yorker 
• A first: Scientists grow plants in soil from the Moon — ScienceDaily 
• Plant-inspired TransfOrigami microfluidics 
• The invaders destroyed the National Gene Bank of Plants of Ukraine | odessa-journal.com 
• Cats Remember Each Other’s Names, Japanese Study Suggests 

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

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It’s travel season here at Plants and Pipettes and so we thought we’d share some travel facts from the plant world! How do plants travel? Is collecting trees cool? How does humidity propel seeds forward? We have the answers.

• Martha Stewart just flew private with eight trees—see the photo to prove it
• A tree crosses the sea: how the richest man in Georgia buys and transports the bushes of the poorest farms – Kiratas
• Taming the Garden (2021) – IMDb
• Legends of the coco de mer – Wikipedia
• Long Distance Seed Dispersal by Forest Elephants | Ecology and Evolution
• Small mammal personalities generate context dependence in the seed dispersal mutualism | PNAS 
• Watch a bunchberry dogwood plant in action | Science News
• Hook-and-loop fastener – Wikipedia
• Cabbage Patch: Fifth Crop Harvested Aboard Space Station | NASA
• Travel in city road networks follows similar transport trade-off principles to neural and plant arbors | Journal of The Royal Society Interface
• Moon tree – Wikipedia
• other sticky plants: Ultimate Hitchhiker
• The walk and jump of horsetail spores (Equisetum) 
• Fastest Plant on Earth | Science News for Students
• Oilbirds disperse large seeds at longer distance than extinct megafauna | Scientific Reports
• China’s Moon Plants Are Dead | Space 
• China grows plants on the moon!
• How a Kitty Walked 200 Miles Home: The Science of Your Cat’s Inner Compass

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 talking about the worst favourite plant ever, keystone genes and how surfers can be scientists. Also: your dog’s breed doesn’t mean what you think it means. 

• It could be witchweed, some evil witchweed
•  Parasitic plant study by Professor Shelley Lumba reveals unexpected pathway to germination of witchweed seeds – Department of Cell & Systems Biology
• Research aims to alleviate global hunger by deciphering the molecular ‘language’ of plants
• SMAX1-dependent seed germination bypasses GA signalling in Arabidopsis and Striga | Nature Plants
• Wanda Zabłocka
• The rise of citational justice: how scholars are making references fairer
• Cite Black Women. 
• Afro-Paradise (Christen A. Smith’s page) 
• We talked about this before here
• Racial and ethnic imbalance in neuroscience reference lists and intersections with gender | bioRxiv 
• Putting new colours on science: Laurier biology prof’s posters have been turned into a downloadable colouring book | TheRecord.com
• In ‘Plant Armor’ crop cover, insects have to navigate textile maze — ScienceDaily
• Novel 3-D Spacer Textiles to Protect Crops from Insect Infestation and That Enhance Plant Growth
• Surfer science supports seawater study
• On the Seasonal Dynamics of Phytoplankton Chlorophyll-a Concentration in Nearshore and Offshore Waters of Plymouth, in the English Channel: Enlisting the Help of a Surfer
• Fun acronym: Study on Pear flowers Detection Performance of YOLO-PEFL Model Trained with Synthetic Target Images 
• YOLOv4 – An explanation of how it works 
• The most boring person in the world works in data analytics, likes watching TV, and lives in a town, scientists say 
• A single gene controls species diversity in an ecosystem — ScienceDaily
• The article – A keystone gene underlies the persistence of an experimental food web 
• Dog behaviour has little to do with breed, study finds
• Ancestry-inclusive dog genomics challenges popular breed stereotypes

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

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Mysteriously we came back yet again for more plant facts. This week, we’re checking a plant’s pores, take about unextinct flowers and why some plants eat the very insects that pollinate them. 

• Books — Information is Beautiful 
• Erik Nylund
• Incredible x-axis here. (twitter)  
• Beautiful News / Visualising Victorian News – The British Library
• Expression of a CO2-permeable aquaporin enhances mesophyll conductance in the C4 species Setaria viridis | eLife 
• The power of air: Airborne environmental DNA plant community monitoring
• Airborne environmental DNA metabarcoding detects more diversity, with less sampling effort, than a traditional plant community survey | BMC Ecology and Evolution
• High-quality genome assembly of a Pestalotiopsis fungus using DIY-friendly methods [version 1; peer review: awaiting peer review]
• Leonardo da Vinci’s rule for how trees branch was close, but wrong | Science News
• Physical Review E – Accepted Paper: Experimental evidence for logarithmic fractal structure of botanical trees
• Tree Branching: Leonardo da Vinci’s Rule versus Biomechanical Models – PMC
• We Just Found a Secret Trait That May Help Redwood Trees Survive Climate Change
• Lost South American Wildflower “Extinctus” Not Extinct After All – “Was It Really That Easy?” 
• Some jack-in-the-pulpit plants may use sex to lure pollinators to their death | Science News

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 our belated easter episode! We talk about the Queen of Vegetables, the mighty eggplant. We filled almost an hour with eggplant facts, factoids and words that merely resemble a fact from a distance. 

• Why is Eggplant a Berry? (ANSWERED)
• Delphinidin – Wikipedia
• Antioxidant activity of nasunin, an anthocyanin in eggplant peels – ScienceDirect.
• Scrapped but not neglected: Insights into the composition, molecular modulation and antioxidant capacity of phenols in peel of eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) fruits at different developmental stages
• Value-Added Lager Beer Enriched with Eggplant ( Solanum melongena L.) Peel Extract
• Utilization of food processing wastes of eggplant as a high potential pectin source and characterization of extracted pectin – ScienceDirect (Pectin source)
• Micro- and nano-structures of cellulose from eggplant plant (Solanum melongena L) agricultural residue – ScienceDirect
• Why is an Eggplant Called That? (ANSWERED)
• File:Eggplant with chicken eggs.jpg – Wikimedia Commons
• YPS Fanpage: Gimmicks: Der Ostereierbaum
• Eggplants Contain Nicotine | Office for Science and Society – McGill University
• This Eggplant Parm at Scalini’s Restaurant in Atlanta Is Famous for Inducing Labor | Bon Appétit
• He–Ne laser accelerates seed germination by modulating growth hormones and reprogramming metabolism in brinjal | Scientific Reports 
• Ask The Editors: Is Raw Eggplant Poisonous? | HuffPost Life 
• About the Nagoya Protocol 
• Genetically modified brinjal – Wikipedia
• Successful Commercialization of Insect-Resistant Eggplant by a Public–Private Partnership: Reaching and Benefiting Resource-Poor Farmers
• Whose germplasm is it?
• The Impacts of GM Foods: Results from a Randomized Controlled Trial of Bt Eggplant in Bangladesh – Ahmed – 2021 – American Journal of Agricultural Economics – Wiley Online Library
• Plastid transformation in eggplant
• A high-quality chromosome-level genome assembly reveals genetics for important traits in eggplan
• Genetic engineering of eggplant accumulating β-carotene in fruit 
• Plastid transformation in eggplant (Solanum melongena L.)
• A high-quality chromosome-level genome assembly reveals genetics for important traits in eggplant
• Genetic Engineering of Eggplant (Solanum melongena L.): Progress, Controversy and Potential

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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We finally found a way to market non-dairy milk as milk without upsetting any consumer or dairy company: cowpea milk. Plus: we discuss plantibodies, micronutrients and, weirdly enough, ocelot pee.

• Black eyed peas could help eliminate need for fertilizer: Popular legume attracts beneficial nitrogen-fixing bacteria — ScienceDaily 
• Genome Editing in Cowpea Vigna unguiculata Using CRISPR-Cas9
• The genome of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata [L.] Walp.)  
• Schoolgirls rumble Ribena vitamin claims | New Zealand | The Guardian 
• Ribena – Wikipedia
• Ribena maker fined $192,000
• Assessing the magnitude of reporting bias in trials of homeopathy: a cross-sectional study and meta-analysis | BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine
• No Hormone to rule them all 
• The plantibody approach: expression of antibody genes in plants to modulate plant metabolism or to obtain pathogen resistance 
• Recyclable pollen-based paper developed by NTU Singapore scientists 
• Scientists develop a recyclable pollen-based paper for repeated printing and ‘unprinting’ — ScienceDaily 
• Fearful symmetry in aposematic plants
• Weeds help mango trees, and possibly others, make more fruit – The Global Plant Council
• Weeds Enhance Pollinator Diversity and Fruit Yield in Mango
• Plants that could tackle vitamin B deficiencies | Kew
• Global plant diversity as a reservoir of micronutrients for humanity
• Link to the paper on Twitter
• Just a 3D printed 3D mass spec plot (twitter)
• Smelly ocelot habitats may scare off seed-dispersing rodents — ScienceDaily

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!