Plants and Pipettes

They didn’t think we could do it and then we did. This is batch three of four, with the facts 50 to 75 in our countdown (countup?) to 100 mostly plant science facts. 

• The importance of being red when young: anthocyanins and the protection of young leaves of Quercus coccifera from insect herbivory and excess light 
• Tofu whey wastewater is a promising basal medium for microalgae culture 
• The complete plastid genome sequence of the parasitic green alga Helicosporidium sp. is highly reduced and structured.
• Indian scientists discover new ‘mermaid’ plant species in Andamans archipelago 
• Ricinus – Wikipedia 
• Wikipedia: Ricin 
• Can Coconut Water Be Used as a Substitute for Blood Plasma? 
• Dracunculus vulgaris – Wikipedia 
• Thermogenic plant – Wikipedia Thermogenic plant 
• Plant scientists’ research attention is skewed towards colourful, conspicuous and broadly distributed flowers 
• Plants v. lasers: remarkable root regeneration – Plants and Pipettes 
• Alismatales – Wikipedia
• Bees of the sea: Tiny crustaceans pollinate underwater plants
• Gene name errors: Lessons not learned 
• Plants to uncover landmines 
• Solar Protocol 
• The Moss That Lives under a Rock
• resurrection plants

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Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

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We underpromised and overdelivered: You wanted 100 facts, we gave you that and a bit more over the span of 4 episodes. This is batch 2: 26 to 50. We have trees, marine microorganisms, old trees, lasers and a plant that cannot die.

• A Plant That ‘Cannot Die’ Reveals Its Genetic Secrets
•  Paleopolyploidy
• Data base of genome duplication
• Diatom
•  Coccolithophore
•  Chlorophyll Map
•  The Many Unexpected Jobs of the Clubmoss Spore
•  Prometheus (tree)
•  Donald Rusk Currey 
• [Photos] Here is Jindai-zakura, Japan’s oldest cherry tree !
• Olive tree of Vouves
• 2,500-Year-Old Ancient Olive Tree Burned Down in Evia Fires in Greece
• What are karrikins and how were they ‘discovered’ by plants? – BMC Biology 
• (PDF) Growth and development of Arabidopsis thaliana under single-wavelength red and blue laser light
• The Latest Development of Laser Application Research in Plant Factory
•  Drunken trees
•  Important phenologists – Nature’s Calendar
•  Apricot kernels and apple and pear seeds are unsafe to eat
• A lesson in cancer quackery

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Yay! It is episode 100! To celebrate, we’re bringen 100 mostly plant science facts to you. Because we can’t ask you to listen to us for THAT long, we’re splitting the bulk. So get ready for the first 25(ish) facts from our giant list!

• From Bethany Nichols: flowers can “hear” bees coming and start producing nectar to encourage them to land on their flowers!
  Flowers can hear buzzing bees—and it makes their nectar sweeter
  Flowers respond to pollinator sound within minutes by increasing nectar sugar concentration 
• Trick or treat: plants that beat up bees 
• From Cathartic Outlet: Any two maize plants are genetically more different genetically than humans and chimpanzees
  Genetic diversity of maize
•  From Fully Operational Gardening Apple: A lot of what we call vegetables are actually fruit. Peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, peas all originate from a flower, which makes them fruit.
• Opinion: Ménage-à-trois hypothesis of plastid endosymbiosis ($) | Plantae 
• From Aly Baumgartner: Some plants produce a type of terpenoid called phytoecdysteroids. These mimic the compounds used by arthropods to molt and can cause insects to molt themselves to death. (src: The phytochemical, biological, and medicinal attributes of phytoecdysteroids: an updated review)
• From Rahul Kumar: Plants such as Nescodon produce red nectar which is the visual and honest signal for geckos living there. 
  Mauritian coloured nectar no longer a mystery: a visual signal for lizard pollinators | Biology Letters
• From Luis de Luna: Some Begonia species organize thylakoids differently in epidermal cells, making them iridescent and allowing them to capture a broader light spectrum than regular chloroplasts.
  (PDF) Lamelloplasts and minichloroplasts in Begoniaceae: iridescence and photosynthetic functioning
• Bomblebees – TNT, Blue, Science Bots – Plants and Pipettes 
• Behold, my brilliant blue fat globules! – Plants and Pipettes 
• Shade Gives This Begonia the Iridescent Blues — In Defense of Plants   
• From Teagen Quilichini: Sporopollenin is one of the most chemically inert biopolymers. It degrades very slowly, so that it is often used to identify shells of spores and pollen grains in sediments
  Sporopollenin
• What is the most abundant biopolymer on Earth? It is cellulose!
  Cellulose
• There is twice as much RuBisCO on the planet than there are humans (by weight).
  RuBisCO is the most abundant protein complex on Earth. There are around 700 Megatonnes of Rubisco (that is 700 000 000 tonnes) on Earth. There are 332 000 000 tonnes of human on the planet. The global mass and average rate of rubisco
• Rhizanthella gardneri 
• The smell of cut grass is meant to bring all the wasps to the yard.
  The maize lipoxygenase, ZmLOX10, mediates green leaf volatile, jasmonate and herbivore‐induced plant volatile production for defense against insect attack
• From Rahul Kumar: Ceratocaryum argenteum produces dung smelling seeds for successful seed dispersion by the dung beetle, an example of faecal mimicry and deception behaviour in plants.
  How dung beetles are duped into rolling and burying seeds
• From Bethany Nichols: Daisy “flowers” aren’t one flower, they’re hundreds of flowers in a structure mimicking a single flower Blossom
  Parts of a Daisy Flower 
• The complete plastid genome sequence of the parasitic green alga Helicosporidium sp. is highly reduced and structured 
• There is a ficus that will strangle you. Well, only if you are a tree.
  From Sam: Strangler fig 
• from Cats: The cat reference genome used to be more precise than the human reference genome.

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 the wood wide web and advantages it brings to those connected to it. Also bird facts, plant facts and gun facts (wtf?)!

• Paper of the week
  • Mycorrhizal symbiosis primes the accumulation of antiherbivore compounds and enhances herbivore mortality in tomato; Javier Rivero,  Javier Lidoy,  Ángel Llopis-Giménez,  Salvador Herrero, Víctor Flors,  María J Pozo; Journal of Experimental Botany, Volume 72, Issue 13, 22 June 2021, Pages 5038–5050, https://doi.org/10.1093/jxb/erab171
• The Idea That Trees Talk to Cooperate Is Misleading
• Learning to Love GMOs (Free Access through this link)
• Australia’s cockatoos are masters of dumpster diving—and now they’re learning from each other
• TwistedDoodles on Twitter: “Here is the template I made so that you can also fill in your neighbourhood cats and share them with the world. Or just me! #neighbourhoodcats… https://t.co/hqfjei5BTi” 
• it’s #BlackBotanistsWeek2021
• Shoots and leaves: the shotgun scientist who hunts moving trees
• Angelica Patterson | The Shotgun Scientist
• ‘Riding shotgun’ – meaning and origin. 
• RNA demethylation increases the yield and biomass of rice and potato plants in field trials
• Mertensia maritima

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 inspired by a giant dick rocket making its way into space (and also back for some reason). Before we go back to shopping online to fund the next space mission, we’re talking some awesome plant science. #inspiring

• The remarkable goat’s beard (and other members of the Tragopogon Genus)
• WikiPedia: Tragopogon
• @KaseyKPham
• Plants are cool and data proves it
• Dr Bethany Nichols
• Fronds with Benefits
• Science funders gamble on grant lotteries
• Researchers unveil ‘phenomenal’ new AI for predicting protein structures
• AlphaFold Protein Structure Database
• DNA pulled from thin air identifies nearby animals.
• Wikipedia Tree That Owns Itself
• Scientists Discover The First Known Algae Species With Three Distinct Sexes
• Rat fact: Neural correlates of ingroup bias for prosociality in rats 
• Rats prefer to help their own kind; Humans may be similarly wired 

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’re back from the summer break. If you had guessed that we will be more on point, less rambly and more focussed on plants after our break I have to ask: do you even know us? Anyway, we have cool science facts and not a single cut in the entire episode. 

• Sedative Effects of Latexes Obtained from Some Lactuca L. Species Growing in Turkey 
• Dinosaurs were night prowlers, study finds
• Tatsuya Amano on Twitter: “#languagebarriers have multiple major consequences for scientists, the advance of science, and its impact on societies. We need a concerted effort from all – both non-native & native speakers. Here we’ve listed ten things you can start doing today. https://t.co/HJcEFm3lPz… https://t.co/h2S8atF2PV“
• The role of plant–pollinator interactions in structuring nectar microbial communities
• Bacterial Dyes in Fashion
• Enchantingly Strange ‘Fairy Lanterns’ Discovered Growing in a Malaysian Rainforest
• What’s the chattiest animal?

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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Fly like a lemur, sting like an ant in a crow, as my late grandfather used to say to me before I was born. With that in mind, let’s talk about some plant facts. We have new organs, delicious salty plants and a first of its kind almost-social fern. Let’s go!

• Flying lemur photos
• These ferns may be the first plants known to share work like ants
• Primitive eusociality in a land plant? – Burns – – Ecology – Wiley Online Library 
• Abena Dove Osseo-Asare
• Sodium addition increases leaf herbivory and fungal damage across four grasslands
• The dark side of rocks: An underestimated high‐quality food resource in river ecosystems
• A widely studied lab plant has revealed a previously unknown organ
• The sex organs of baobab flowers may solve the puzzle of trees that bear more fruit
• Reproductive ecology of the African baobab: Floral features differ among individuals with different fruit production 
• A microbial eukaryote with a unique combination of purple bacteria and green algae as endosymbionts

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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I said hey, what’s going on? We’re more or less vaxxed, we’re excited about summer and we’re bringing plant facts! We’re diving deep into epigenetics, discuss climate fixes and talk for a surprisingly long time about marsupial genitalia. The usual.

CRISPR-based targeting of DNA methylation in Arabidopsis thaliana by a bacterial CG-specific DNA methyltransferase
Basudev Ghoshal, Colette L. Picard, Brandon Vong, Suhua Feng, Steven E. Jacobsen
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jun 2021, 118 (23) e2125016118; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2125016118

• Photo contest by the Canadian Phytopathological society (submitted by Sara)
• holly draws — comics
• Holly McKelvey (@holljmck)
• ‘Quick fixes’ to the climate crisis risk harming nature 
• Human-food feedback in tropical forests
• Nectar non-protein amino acids (NPAAs) do not change nectar palatability but enhance learning and memory in honey bees 
• A plant-based diet may lower severity of COVID-19 infection by 73 per cent 
• Chromothripsis as an on-target consequence of CRISPR–Cas9 genome editing (nature.com)
• Chromothripsis as an on-target consequence of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing (bioRxiv)
• Echidnas Have Four-Tipped Penises, And Scientists Want to Understand Why
• SEDUCE ME: Duck | From Green Porno’s Isabella Rossellni

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Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

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We are very hopeful this week that many bad things will come to an end. Also, we talk about a spiky favourite tree, lots of pride in STEM and many other cool things. 

• Monkey puzzle tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araucaria_araucana 
• It is pride month all throughout June: Google pride month for a fun effect
• LGBTQ+ Plant Scientists (@LGBTQPlantSci) 
• Mehmet Kurt on Peer Review for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity (PRIDE) providing feedback on grant proposals etc for young LGBTQI+ people in STEM
• Pride in STEM | A charitable trust for LGBT+ in Science, Engineering, Tech, and Maths
• 500 Queer Scientists Visibility Campaign : 500 Queer Scientists
• Anna Dye is plant virologist and vector biologist from the US
• Pedro Sena is an ecologist from Brazil
• Yolanda Caceres is an ecologist from Germany
• Han Tan is an assistant professor of plant genetics in the US
• Digital forensics experts prone to bias, study shows
• A Hierarchy of Expert Performance (HEP) applied to Digital Forensics: Reliability and Biasability in Digital Forensics Decision Making | Request PDF
• “It’s a reverse banana peel slap bracelet”
• Morphomechanical Innovation Drives Explosive Seed Dispersal 
• Modeling the 3D genome of plants
• 3D genomics across the tree of life reveals condensin II as a determinant of architecture type
• Natural temperature fluctuations promote COOLAIR regulation of FLC
• Sound Waves Promote Arabidopsis thaliana Root Growth by Regulating Root Phytohormone Content
• A tuning point in plant acoustics investigation
• Scientists rally around misconduct consultant facing legal threat after challenging COVID-19 drug researcher
• Elisabeth Bik (@MicrobiomDigest)
• Magic Tricks May Fool You, but These Birds Can See Through Them

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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Big udder won’t like this episode – not specifically because we said anything but mostly because they are a joyless bundle of cow farts. In this brand new and highly sought-after episode, we are discussing proximity proteomics, global earthworm abundance and the best way to water your plants. 

• Proximity proteomics in a marine diatom reveals a putative cell surface-to-chloroplast iron trafficking pathway; Jernej Turnšek, John K Brunson, Maria del Pilar Martinez Viedma, Thomas J Deerinck, Aleš Horák, Miroslav Oborník, Vincent A Bielinski, Andrew Ellis Allen; eLife 2021;10:e52770
• Global data on earthworm abundance, biomass, diversity and corresponding environmental properties 
• Joe Brown on Twitter: “Water your plants with … water. New findings from Ellie Brown, age 8. https://t.co/niRGFDtIOg“
• Can algae contribute to the war with Covid-19? 
• Global Cactus Traffickers Are Cleaning Out the Deserts (Thanks, Apple Chew Yen Peng)
• This Unique Flower Smells Like Dead Insects to Attract And Trap Coffin Flies
• Flowers respond to pollinator sound within minutes by increasing nectar sugar concentration
• Effects of Graphene Oxide on Germination and Early Growth of Plants
• Kokumi: The sensation that makes tasting better 

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!