Episodes

Pennycress for your thoughts

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Heyyy it’s another episode of the plants and pipettes podcast! This week, we have something special for you: we talked to Ratan Chopra, researcher at the University of Minnesota about his work domesticating pennycress. Sounds familiar? Yes! We presented his research on the blog and now had the chance to talk to him directly.

Ratan works in the lab of David Marks who is pioneering and driving forward the work on pennycress. Using its close family relationship to Arabidopsis, he and his group were able to quickly advance the knowledge and domestication of pennycress, turning it from a weed into a soon-to-be crop plant.… Read more

Crouching Dragon Hidden Protein

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Welcome again to another episode of our little podcast. This week, we’re talking about the intricacies of Saffron and

Tegan’s paper: Schmidt, T. , Heitkam, T. , Liedtke, S. , Schubert, V. and Menzel, G. (2019), Adding color to a century‐old enigma: multi‐color chromosome identification unravels the autotriploid nature of saffron (Crocus sativus) as a hybrid of wild Crocus cartwrightianus cytotypes. New Phytol, 222: 1965-1980. doi:10.1111/nph.15715

Joram’s paper: The Role of Plastidic Trigger Factor Serving Protein Biogenesis in Green Algae and Land Plants, Marina Rohr, Fabian Ries, Claudia Herkt, Vincent Leon Gotsmann, Lisa Désirée Westrich, Karin Gries, Raphael Trösch, Jens Christmann, Frederic Chaux-Jukic, Martin Jung, David Zimmer, Timo Mühlhaus, Frederik Sommer, Michael Schroda, Sandro Keller, Torsten Möhlmann, Felix Willmund, Plant Physiology Mar 2019, 179 (3) 1093-1110; DOI: 10.1104/pp.18.01252

The “crouching dragon” protein structure from the paper.… Read more

Seven Dish

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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.,… Read more

What’s the deal with ferns and their epidermis?

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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!… Read more

Hot Junk

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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.… Read more

Throwing Shade

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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!… Read more

Pee-rigation

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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.… Read more