#plantphysiology — Public Fediverse posts

Parasitic plants, such as dodders, acquire and permanently integrate functional foreign genes from their host plants through horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Instead of merely preserving these stolen genes, the parasites structurally remodel them over millions of years while retaining their original biological functions.
#PlantGenetics #EvolutionaryBiology #MolecularBiology #PlantPhysiology #sflorg
https://www.sflorg.com/2026/08/bot08272601.html

#AcademicChatter
I'm quite proud of this paper by two of my collaborators, who spent several years on a very, very thorough #GeneNetwork analysis of Abscisic acid (ABA, a key signalling molecule that mediates plant responses to environmental cues, such ad #drought) in #Poplar roots.
https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1012256
#PlantPhysiology #GeneTranscription #Transcriptome #GeneExpression

@academicchatter
Never loose hope : an experiment done by colleagues in 2015 (I was only marginally involved in some of the measurements) has finally been published 🙂 We were able to identify a transcription factor involved in the natural variation in whole-plant water use in Arabidopsis thaliana. Interestingly, trait-climate analyses indicated that temperature, rather than precipitation, was shaping genetic-geographic variation in whole plant water-use strategies in A. thaliana.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/pei3.70199
#WaterUseEfficiency #PlantPhysiology
#AcademicChatter

🧹 Introducing CleanEX — a free, browser-based tool for cleaning and exploring Dualex leaf optical data. No installation, no server: everything runs locally via WebR, so your data never leaves your device. 🔒

The raw Dualex .txt export isn’t analysis-ready out of the box — null bytes, comment blocks, terse column names, and group numbers with no treatment labels. CleanEX handles all of it, lets you assign treatments per group, export to wide or long format, and generate exploratory bar charts (mean ± SE, 300 dpi PNG) for Chl, Flav, Anth and NBI.

👉 https://www.mauromaver.eu/posts/rebelot/cleanex_eng/

#PlantScience #PlantPhysiology #OpenScience #Phenotyping #Rstats #WebR #academia #Research

Urban treescapes act as critical thermal regulation infrastructure by significantly reducing ambient temperatures and mitigating harmful heat exposure in built-up city environments.
#UrbanClimatology #EnvironmentalScience #PlantPhysiology #sflorg
https://www.sflorg.com/2026/07/as07312601.html

Recent research demonstrates that varying intensities of drought stress fundamentally alter the biochemical interactions and susceptibility of sugar beet plants to their primary pest, the beet leaf miner (Pegomya cunicularia).
#AgriculturalScience #Entomology #PlantPhysiology #CropEcology #sflorg
https://www.sflorg.com/2026/07/agri07292601.html

Leaf expansion (Botany 🌱)

Leaf expansion is a process by which plants make efficient use of the space around them by causing their leaves to enlarge, or wither. This process enables a plant to maximize its own biomass, whether it be due to increased surface area; which enables more sunlight to be absorbed by chloroplasts, driving the rate of photosynthesis upward, or it enables more stomata to be created o...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf_expansion

#LeafExpansion #Botany #PlantPhysiology

Plant canopy temperature—the actual heat experienced on leaf surfaces—is increasing at a significantly faster rate than ambient air temperature. Current climate models largely rely on air temperature, leading to a systematic underestimation of the thermal stress vegetation will face as global temperatures rise.
#Climatology #PlantPhysiology #Ecology #EnvironmentalScience #Hydrology #ClimateChange #sflorg
https://www.sflorg.com/2026/07/as07212601.html

🌱 Introducing CleanRhizo — a free, browser-based tool for cleaning and exploring root morphology data exported from WinRhizo (Regent Instruments).

No installation, no server, no data upload: everything runs locally in your browser via WebR, so your files never leave your device. 🔒

🔧 What it does:
• Reads raw WinRhizo .txt files and lets you select which columns to keep
• Automatically decodes treatment names from sample IDs, including multi-level experimental designs (biological × technical replicates: pot + plant)
• Supports underscore, dot, and space as separators — or lets you assign roles manually for non-standard naming
• Exports to wide or long format (ready for R or other downstream tools)
• Generates exploratory bar charts (mean ± SE) with optional individual data points (jitter), downloadable as 300 dpi PNG

Available in EN 🇬🇧 IT 🇮🇹 ES 🇪🇸 FR 🇫🇷

➡️ https://www.mauromaver.eu/CleanRhizo/CleanRhizo.html

#PlantScience #RootBiology #OpenScience #Phenotyping #PlantPhysiology #Rstats #WebR #WinRhizo #Research

Soil-plant-atmosphere continuum (Hydrology 💧)

The soil-plant-atmosphere continuum is the pathway for water moving from soil through plants to the atmosphere. Continuum in the description highlights the continuous nature of water connection through the pathway. The low water potential of the atmosphere, and relatively higher w...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil-plant-atmosphere_continuum

#SoilPlantAtmosphereContinuum #Hydrology #Climatology #SoilPhysics #PlantPhysiology #EcologicalProcesses

9-Jul-2026
#Roots steer clear of plant rot
Newly identified #saprotropism helps roots avoid decaying plant matter—but not animal decay

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1134926

#science #plants #plantPhysiology #soil

2-Jul-2026
Study reveals how giant #trees in #tropicalForests transport #water to their uppermost branches
The study published in #Science helps us understand the role of this little-studied type of #vegetation in #climateChange. One percent of the tallest trees store more than half of the #carbon in #tropical forest #ecosystems.

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1134457

#ecology #plantPhysiology

Under environmental stress, plant cell chloroplasts form tiny, finger-like extensions called stromules that send intracellular distress signals to the nucleus to activate protective genetic programs.
#PlantPhysiology #MolecularBiology #CellBiology #Botany #sflorg
https://www.sflorg.com/2026/06/bot06292601.html

Plant stomata—microscopic pores responsible for gas exchange and water regulation—are functionally dependent on lipid-modifying enzymes that dictate the flexibility of their surrounding guard cells. Modifying these enzymes reduces pore mobility, which significantly decreases water loss and increases plant survival rates during droughts.
#MolecularBiology #CellularBotany #PlantPhysiology #Botany #sflorg
https://www.sflorg.com/2026/06/mbio06252601.html

#Stomata, which are the pores on the leaf surface which regulate CO2 coming into the leaf, but also the amount of water vapour lost (transpiration), react relatively slowly to environmental changes. One of my PhD students just got his first paper out, showing for beech that shade adapted leaves are more responsive to changes in light. This has consequences for shaded leaves in the canopy of forest : more responsive stomata have a more efficient CO2 uptake and thus #Photosynthesis. Plants under drought were also more responsive, reducing their amount of water lost by transpiration and increasing thereby their #WaterUseEfficiency.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ppl.70856
#AcademicChatter #ClimateChange
#Drought #Forests #Trees #Stomata #PlantPhysiology

7-May-2026
How #soil #bacteria help #plants defend themselves against disease
Researchers at the University of Liège have uncovered a new mechanism by which soil bacteria activate plants’ immune defenses

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1127302

#science #ecology #plantPhysiology

Plant seeds and seedlings possess the biological ability to detect and respond to natural sound vibrations in their environment, utilizing these acoustic cues to break dormancy and accelerate growth.
#Botany #Bioacoustics #PlantPhysiology #MechanicalEngineering #sflorg
https://www.sflorg.com/2026/04/bot04222601.html

Researchers have mapped the precise structural pathways of Photosystem II in plants, revealing exactly how water molecules navigate to the active site for the critical water-splitting reaction that initiates #photosynthesis
#StructuralBiology #PlantPhysiology #Biochemistry #Botany #sflorg
https://www.sflorg.com/2026/04/phgy04182601.html

Exposure to light directly enhances the structural adhesion between the outermost epidermal layer and the inner tissues of plant stems. This physiological response acts as a mechanical regulatory system that limits internal tissue expansion and governs overall plant growth.
#Botany #PlantPhysiology #CellBiology #AgriculturalScience #sflorg
https://www.sflorg.com/2026/04/bot04132601.html

The latest research results on stomatal dynamics from our PhD candidate (and quite proud of it :-) : the shade tolerant Fagus sylvatica , the common beech, shows more reactive stomatal responses on shade leaves than on sun leaves, suggesting an optimisation to increase CO2 uptake. The differences in stomatal dynamics were not related, as usually assumed, to differences in stomatal morphology.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ppl.70856

#AcademicChatter #PlantPhysiology #BioDiversity #Stomata #StomatalAnatomy #PlantScience #ForestEcology

5-Mar-2026
This odd little plant could help turbocharge crop yields

this is about engineering #Rubisco being more efficient in #hornworts

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1118588

#science #plants #plantphysiology #crops

@MiguelGuerreiro hello, biologists and ecologists is a very wide field. I'm rather on the plant side of things, more specifically in #ForestEcology looking at tree #PlantPhysiology and #EcoPhysiology

Are smaller stomata faster in reacting to environmental changes such as light, CO2, atmospheric humidity, temperature ? I have participated with our data in a group publication where we take a closer look at the "Speedy small stomata" paradigm.
Using data from over 80 plant species, we found only weak correlations between stomatal size and maximum stomatal closing or opening speeds as well as response times.
Instead, stomatal speed appears to be context-dependent, shaped by species-specific traits, stomatal type and broader anatomical and physiological features.
These findings support a trait-based approach to assessing stomatal kinetics, which has implications for understanding #EcosystemFunctioning under #ClimateChange and #CropBreeding for higher #WaterUseEfficiency and #photosynthesis.

Woning et al. Revisiting the relationship between stomatal size and speed across species – a meta-analysis

https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fnph.70842

#AcademicChatter #BioDiversity #ClimateChange #PlantPhysiology
#Stomata

please #Share / Boost widely in your #AcademicNetworks : A #SeniorLecturerPosition in botany and mycology with a research activity in #PlantPhysiology will be open for competition in spring 2026 at the Silva joint research unit / Université de Lorraine, Nancy, France.

https://silva.nancy.hub.inrae.fr/actualites/postes-de-mc-a-l-universite-de-lorraine

The lecturer will be involved in teaching (lectures, tutorials and practical work) as part of the pharmaceutical studies programme, focusing mainly on botany, mycology and plant biology. Teaching has to be done in French.
Whereas the research will focus on the acclimation of trees by molecular mechanisms to the increasingly severe environmental constraints (ozone, drought, heat waves). The research will be done int he PHARE team
https://silva.nancy.hub.inrae.fr/equipes-de-recherche/phare

Application dates for positions on the Odyssée platform: 3 March (10 a.m.) to 3 April (4 p.m.) 2026
https://odyssee.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/

#science #career #sciencejobs
#Forests #PlantScience #Botany #Mycology #SciJobs #Vacancy #JobVacancy #JobOpening #JobOpportunity #ResearchJobs #LecturerOpening
#Academia #Biodiversity #ClimateChange @[email protected]
#universitedelorraine

14-Jan-2026
Plant discovery could lead to new ways of producing #medicines

The study focused on a #plant called Flueggea suffruticosa, which produces a particularly powerful #alkaloid known as securinine. While investigating how this chemical is made, scientists discovered that the process is driven by a gene that looks more like it comes from #bacteria than from a plant.

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1112631

#science #ecology #plantPhysiology #NaturalProducts

“Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God”*…

It’s easy to feel hope in the advances that the world has made in eraditcating extreme poverty over the last several decades. But as Max Roser writes, unless the poorest economies start growing, this period of progress against the worst form of poverty is over…

In the last decades, the world has made fantastic progress against extreme poverty. In 1990, 2.3 billion people lived in extreme poverty. Since then, the number of extremely poor people has declined by 1.5 billion people.

This means on any average day in the last 35 years, about 115,000 people left extreme poverty behind.1 Leaving the very worst poverty behind doesn’t mean a life free of want, but it does mean a big change. Additional income matters most for those who have the least. It means having the chance to leave hunger behind, to gain access to clean water, to access better healthcare, and to have at least some electricity — for light at night and perhaps even to cook and heat.

Can we expect this rapid progress to continue?

Unfortunately, we cannot. Based on current trends, progress against extreme poverty will come to a halt. As we’ll see, the number of people in extreme poverty is projected to decline, from 831 million people in 2025 to 793 million people in 2030. After 2030, the number of extremely poor people is expected to increase.

To understand why the rapid progress against deep poverty will not continue into the future, we need to know why the world made progress in the past.

Extreme poverty declined in the last three decades because, back in the 1990s, the majority of the poorest people on the planet lived in countries that subsequently achieved very fast economic growth. In Indonesia and China, more than two-thirds of the population lived in extreme poverty. But these economies then grew rapidly, so that by today, the share has declined to less than 10%. Other large Asian countries — including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Philippines — also achieved strong growth, and as a consequence, the share living in extreme poverty declined rapidly. Much of the progress happened in Asia, but conditions in other regions improved too: the share living in extreme poverty also declined in Ghana, Cape Verde, Cameroon, Panama, Bolivia, Mexico, Brazil, and many other countries.

This chart shows the economic change in these countries over the past decades. As incomes increased, the share of people in extreme poverty declined.

Share of population living in extreme poverty vs. GDP per capita, 1990 to 2024 (World Bank, Eurostat, OECD, IMF)

What is different today is that the majority of the world’s poorest people are stuck in economies that have been stagnating for a long time.Consider the case of Madagascar. In the long run, the country has not seen any growth at all: GDP per capita in Madagascar is about the same today as it was in 1950. As a consequence, the number of people in extreme poverty increased in line with the country’s population growth. In richer countries, it is possible to reduce poverty by reducing inequality through redistribution, but a country like Madagascar cannot reduce its share of people in extreme poverty through redistribution. This is because the mean income is lower than the poverty line; if everyone had the same income, everyone would be living in extreme poverty.

The situation is similar in other countries, as the chart below shows: in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Malawi, Burundi, and the Central African Republic, more than half of the population lives in extreme poverty. As their economies have stagnated, the deep poverty that most people live in has remained largely unchanged for decades.

This is why we have to expect the end of progress against extreme poverty based on current trends. If the poorest economies remain stagnant, hundreds of millions of people will continue to live in extreme poverty.

Share of population living in extreme poverty, 1992-2022 (World Bank)

I’m always skeptical when people say that we are at a juncture in history where the future looks much different than the past. But when it comes to the fight against extreme poverty, I fear it is true. Today, the majority of the world’s poorest people are living in economies that have not achieved economic growth in the recent past… Based on current trends, we have to expect the end of progress against extreme poverty…

… It’s no news that we should expect an end to progress against extreme poverty. This article is an update of an article I published in 2019, in which I wrote the same: the fact that the poorest economies are not growing means that the rapid progress against extreme poverty seen in the last decades will end.

Although this prospect has been known for years, it has hardly received the attention it deserves. Progress against extreme poverty was one of humanity’s most outstanding achievements of the past decades — the end of it would be one of the very worst realities of the coming ones.

Importantly, however, these projections are not predictions; their purpose is not to describe what the world in 2030 or 2040 will certainly look like. These projections describe what we have to expect based on current trends; they tell us about our present world rather than the reality of tomorrow. Current trends don’t have to become future facts: many countries left extreme poverty behind in the past, because they had a moment at which they broke out of stagnation.

What these projections tell us, however, is that if the poorest countries do not start to grow, a very bleak future is ahead of us: a future in which extreme poverty remains the reality for hundreds of millions for many years to come…

Eminently worth reading in full– and acting on: “The end of progress against extreme poverty?” from @maxroser.bsky.social and @ourworldindata.org.

* Proverbs 14:31, NIV

###

As we put our shoulders to the wheel, we might spare a thought for a man who contributed mightily to our capacity to feed humanity, Kenneth V. Thimann; he died on this date in 1997. A microbiologist, he was a pioneer in plant physiology (especially the hormones that control the development of plants). Building on the thinking of Frits Went, he identified the first plant hormone to be discovered– the first auxin, a class of growth hormones, and revealed its chemical structure– which proved very important to agriculture and its yields.

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