Plant Biology Teaching Resources (Higher Education)

Don't miss these! Super resources!

Cool - life as a plant disease diagnostician. Part CSI, part MD. Diagnosing and preventing plant diseases - a first person account.

Just a few more days until the threatened destruction of a field trial of GM wheat in England. At this point it's not certain if the demonstration will include vandalism, but should it, what happens next?

My fantasy is to take the vandals (and the people who encourage them, like her http://tinyurl.com/83v6me2)  to a quiet place for four years.

During that period, they'd have to pass courses in chemistry (general, organic, and physical, because without understanding chemistry you know nothing...), statistics, economics, ecology, environmental science, genetics, cell biology, biochemistry and plant physiology. Oh, and they'd have to spend a year doing experimental work (something really hard, like proteomics or electrophysiology, or whole-organismal physiology) AND come up with a publication-quality figure. If they fail at the last task, a year in a refugee camp could substitute, where people know what it means to really worry about their food .....

At the end of their four years, I'd let them go. What do you think the chances would be that they'd rush off to destroy someone's experiment? I think ZERO.

Nice article by Anastasia Bodnar on Biofortified blog.

Interesting event going on today and tomorrow. If you want to catch the action, you can follow the twitter feed (twitter.com/#!/search/%23sackler).

The talks will be webcast later. If you want to be alerted when they're ready sign up here: http://sacklersciencecommunication.eventbrite.com

(Bonus points if you know which speaker we have pictured here - scroll down through the speaker page if you don't know her)

Plants are dependent on the sun. Sunlight does not only supply them with energy, but also controls their development steps. So-called photoreceptors activate the processes of germination, leaf development, bud formation, and blossoming in the cells.

The link at the bottom of the science daily article is broken, try this one instead:

http://www.plantcell.org/content/early/2012/05/10/tpc.111.094656.abstract

Who can resist a quiz? What kind of researcher are you? What kind of skills do you need to develop? Here is a set of five practical advice guides to help you develop into an informed, leading, engaging, creative, balanced researcher. 

Thanks to the great Vitae organization http://www.vitae.ac.uk/

This lecture describes the chemical composition of food, how different foods affect us physiologically and can contribute to the prevention or development of chronic diseases, and how nutrition research, agricultural practices and plant breeding programs can contribute to more healthful diets. Includes slides, lecture notes, teaching guide, and mini-slide set for the very busy!

Here's a nice website with a good on-line plant identification key (NE plants).

Anybody getting a talk ready? Getting students ready to give their first talks? Here are some good points, humorously presented.

My favorite - #8. Some good suggestions in the comments too!

"Discipline-Based Education Research:

Understanding and Improving Learning in Undergraduate Science and Engineering"

DBER.....how students learn in particular scientific disciplines and identify ways to improve instruction.

Institutions, disciplinary societies, and professional societies should support faculty efforts to use evidence-based teaching strategies in their classrooms,....prepare future faculty who understand research findings on learning and teaching, .... and support venues for DBER scholars to share their research findings at meetings and in high-quality journals.

Pass along to any US department chairs, former department chairs or equivalent - nice opportunity to be at the leading edge of educatonal reform.

A salicylic acid receptor identified - yay! Elegant study, elegant regulatory mechanism for SA-mediated transcription and plant immunity.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature11162.html

And a biological clock that is found in all domains of life - another yay!

Here's the open access summary http://www.nature.com/news/a-biological-clock-to-wind-them-all-1.10654

and the article

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/nature11088.pdf

The ASPB Education Foundation seeks proposals from ASPB members to support education and outreach activities that advance knowledge and appreciation of plant biology.

Project Summaries from previously funded projects are available at (http://my.aspb.org/?page=EF_ProgramsResources).

PS - if you are not a member, you can join at anytime!

Where did Chalcone isomerase come from? This story points to its non-enzymatic origins.

"Notably, the fatty-acid binding protein (FAP) discovery defines the adaptive evolution of a stereospecific and catalytically ‘perfected’ enzyme from a non-enzymatic ancestor over a defined period of plant evolution....“This is really cool because it’s one of the best cases for something that was not an enzyme evolving into an extremely efficient enzyme."

Here's a link to the Nature article: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature11009.html