This message was sent to ##Email## To advertise in this publication please click here November 24, 2021 .ASPB SPOTLIGHT Position Available: Program Facilitator, ROOT&SHOOT NSF Funded Award to Promote Cultural Change in Plant Science ASPB is excited to announce that we're recruiting for a Program Facilitator to coordinate a plant science-wide NSF-funded Research Coordination Network. This is a full-time, five-year grant-funded position. We seek a dedicated program facilitator who has demonstrated experience working successfully with diverse people. Core values for this project are equity, inclusion, transparency, and justice. The Program Facilitator will be responsible for the day-to-day management and smooth, timely, on-budget operation of the project. Eligibility to work in the US is required.  SPONSORED CONTENT Promoted by PhytoTech Labs Media Optimization - Optimize your formulation with our Media Optimization Kit. Click here to get started! Bulk Savings – Complete the form to tell us more and save on your bulk components Antibiotics – Save big on high quality antibiotic powders and sterile filtered solutions Plant Growth Regulators – We have the largest selection of cytokinins, auxins, gibberellins and much more .FROM ASPB & PLANTAE Applications Now Open for Plant Biology 2022 Travel Grants and Women's Young Investigator Travel Awards ASPB is offering a limited number of awards in each of these two programs to attend Plant Biology 2022 in Portland, Oregon, July 9-13, 2022. Read more about both programs on the ASPB Funding page. Application deadlines for these awards are in early December. Plant Physiology Welcomes 13 New Assistant Features Editors Assistant Features Editors are promising early-career scientists and they bring their passion for science to our journal, communicating to our readers each month some of the most exciting advances in research. Each AFE is invited to serve a two-year term. As 2021 draws to a close, we say goodbye to those who started in January 2020, and welcome to those whose term begins in January 2022.  PRODUCT SHOWCASE Colored LEDs With Unparalleled Performance Colored LEDs in linear arrangements can cause lighting flaws that may affect your research. Percival has solved this problem with SciBrite – colored LED lighting with unparalleled uniformity and up to eight evenly mixed colors. No other colored lighting measures up to SciBrite! LEARN MORE .CHANGING CULTURES AND CLIMATES The mission of Changing Cultures and Climates is to provide information that supports and promotes diversity, inclusivity, and equity in the international plant science community so that it grows to more accurately reflect that of our larger, global society. Science Identity Among Latinx Students: The Role of a Critical Race Theory-Informed Undergraduate Research Experience From CBE: Life Sciences Education The authors developed a program called Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity, Promoting Opportunities for Diversity in Education and Research (BUILD PODER; poder means "to be able to"). This program is an undergraduate research experience with the rigor of traditional programs that also explicitly addresses structural, cultural, and gender inequities in science and honors cultural and gendered identities for underrepresented racial minority students within a critical race theory framework. Here they report on the successful implementation of this program. A webinar discussing this program will be held in January 2022.  SPONSORED CONTENT Promoted by Agrisera Save 15% off Environmental stress antibodies Free Posters! Respiration, PSII, Rubisco Save 25% off On epitope tag antibodies: FLAG, GFP, YPF, HA, 3xHis, 6xHis Find the antibody for Arabidopsis thaliana, algae, barley, rice, maize and many more Short videos about Western blot and antibodies Recognizing Native American Heritage Day, November 26 November 25 is Thanksgiving. November 26 is Native American Heritage Day. Think about what you might have learned in school about the origins of Thanksgiving. Now think about it from an Indigenous/Native American/Native Alaskan perspective. How has European colonization affected the histories of these peoples? Take time to read and reflect on why this is a difficult weekend for many people. Here are some resources to get you started: Native Hope, Smithsonian, National Geographic, and Indian Country Today. Building Better Together: Strategies for a Healthy and Inclusive Research Community The past two years have highlighted underlying pervasive systemic vulnerabilities in our scientific communities: marginalization of historically-excluded groups; assaults on mental health within our research networks; disproportionate stresses and job insecurities for early-career/junior scientists due to the pandemic. So, where do we go from here? Returning to a "new normal" requires us to be reflective, envisioning a more equitable and supportive future by engaging all members of our community. The Maize Genetics Cooperation (MGC), in collaboration with Achieve More LLC, through an NSF-funded Research Coordination Network, invites all maize researchers, collaborators and friends! A schedule for the event and a link to register will be made available at the end of November. Registration is required and will be free: all are welcome to attend at no cost. Held virtually on January 20 and 21 2022, 12:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. EST. .#WeAreASPB Plant Physiology Article of the Week: Piriformospora indica recruits host-derived putrescine for growth promotion in plants The spotlight is on Anish Kundu, Shruti Mishra, Pritha Kundu, Abhimanyu Jogawat, and Jyothilakshmi Vadassery from India's National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR). They demonstrate that Piriformospora indica-induced elevated putrescine biosynthesis in tomato roots stimulates growth phytohormones auxin and gibberellin, resulting in growth promotion. The Plant Cell Article of the Week: Evolutionary systems biology reveals patterns of rice adaptation to drought-prone agro-ecosystems The spotlight is on Simon C. Groen, Zoé Joly-Lopez, Adrian E. Platts, Mignon Natividad, Zoë Fresquez, William M. Mauck, III, Marinell R. Quintana, Carlo Leo U. Cabral, Rolando O. Torres, Rahul Satija, Michael D. Purugganan, and Amelia Henry. Their research shows that rice varieties from drought-prone agro-ecosystems show adaptive genetic and phenotypic variation in drought resistance traits that are integrated across above- and belowground tissues. Plant Direct Article of the Week: Tomato and cotton G protein beta subunit mutants display constitutive autoimmune responses The spotlight is on Thi Thao Ninh, Wei Gao, Yuri Trusov, Jing-Ruo Zhao, Lu Long, Chun-Peng Song, and Jose Ramon Botella. Their article shows that, despite the autoimmune response observed in slgb1 mutants, SlGB1 is a positive regulator of the pathogen-associated molecular pattern (PAMP)-triggered immunity (PTI) response in tomato. They speculate that the phenotypic differences observed between Arabidopsis and tomato/cotton/rice/maize Gβ knockouts do not necessarily reflect divergences in G protein-mediated defense mechanisms. Share Your Moment in the Spotlight with ASPB Members! ASPB would like to highlight news coverage about plant science. If you or your research is being highlighted in newspapers, magazines, television, radio, movies, online, or other sources, please let us know! Just send a quick note, URL, and other relevant information to ASPB News production manager, Diane McCauley, at diane@aspb.org. PRODUCT SHOWCASE Reach Your Prospects Every Week Thousands of industry professionals subscribe to association news briefs, which allows your company to push messaging directly to their inboxes and take advantage of the association's brand affinity. Connect with Highly Defined Buyers and Maximize Your Brand Exposure   LEARN MORE   Plant Hormone Analysis Lifeasible provides a list of methods that can be applied to the detection of a wide range of hormones in various types of plant tissues. Hormone Family Bucket Gibberellin Family Brassinosteroid Family Melatonin   LEARN MORE   .PLANTAE JOBS The Plantae Job Center offers job seekers and employers a great resource for finding the right match of people to careers. Job seekers get free access to a searchable list of jobs specific to science careers, as well as access to the Mentoring Center and to a list of available internships. Employers who post a job get access to over 500 searchable profiles of job seekers. With over 140,000 unique page views in 2020, the Plantae Job Center is your resource for finding your next opportunity or your next hire. Below are just a few of the jobs currently listed on the site. Postdoc in Plant Molecular Biology   USDA ARS Food Quality Lab Beltsville, MD Learn more .PLANT SCIENCE EVENTS For plant science events, make sure to check out the Global Plant Science Events Calendar. Also, check the calendar for the latest cancellations and postponements due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as webinars and online events you can join. .FROM THE FIELD Detecting the Disease Resistance of a Plant When It Is Only a Seed From Purdue University On the sometimes foggy journey of following genetic traits to breed resilient plants, a newly identified gene lights the way to soybeans' natural resistance to a devastating disease. Purdue University recently announced an academic-industrial partnership with Corteva Agriscience, resulting in the identification of an individual gene responsible for Phytophthora resistance so plant breeders can easily detect which plants carry the trait. The gene, designated Rps11, confers broad-spectrum resistance to the pathogen. The team identified and cloned the gene, a critical step to create molecular markers that precisely detect the presence of the gene — the same principle used in testing for COVID-19. Hedges Do Much More Than Block Your View — They Also Link Ecosystems Together From The Atlantic Hedgerows are as British as fish and chips. In recent years, ecologists — especially in Britain, Ireland, and continental Europe, but also in places that have more recently adopted hedgerows, such as California — have come to view these man-made structures as important ecosystems in their own right. They form a vital reservoir of biodiversity in human-dominated landscapes where many species might otherwise struggle to survive. By nurturing pollinating insects, they can enhance the yield of crops. And they do it all while pulling carbon out of the atmosphere. Michigan State University Research Team Working with 142-Year-Old Seeds Still Seeing Growth From WKAR-FM In April, a team of Michigan State University plant biologists dug up a bottle of seeds buried by botanist W.J. Beal in 1879. The seeds have been subjected to various tests to see if they would grow nearly a century and a half later. Margaret Fleming is a plant biology researcher at MSU. She was also a part of the Beal seed experiment team. WKAR's Sophia Saliby spoke with Fleming about the latest results. Scientists Solve 50-Year-Old Mystery Behind Plant Growth From the University of California, Riverside A team of researchers led by UC Riverside has demonstrated for the first time one way that a small molecule turns a single cell into something as large as a tree. For half a century, scientists have known that all plants depend on this molecule, auxin, to grow. Until now, they didn't understand exactly how auxin sets growth in motion. The word auxin is derived from the Greek word "auxein," meaning "to grow." There are two main pathways that auxin uses to orchestrate plant growth, and one of them is now described in a new Nature journal article. Breeding Plants with Genes from One Parent From the University of California, Davis Scientists are a step closer to breeding plants with genes from only one parent. New research led by plant biologists at the University of California, Davis, published Nov. 19 in Science Advances, shows the underlying mechanism behind eliminating half the genome and could make for easier and more rapid breeding of crop plants with desirable traits such as disease resistance. The work stems from a discovery made over a decade ago by the late Simon Chan, associate professor of plant biology in the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences, and colleagues. New Knowledge About Our Earth's Most Important Biochemical Reaction: A Step Towards Increasing CO2 Uptake in Plants From the University of Copenhagen Imagine being able to grow plants that could absorb even more CO2 from Earth's atmosphere and thereby help solve the world's climate problems. Humans have selected, bred and optimized plants to increase food production and ensure for our survival for thousands of years. But the most important and fundamental function of life on Earth — photosynthesis — has not been relevant with regards to plant selection or breeding until now, an age when greenhouse gas emissions from human activities threaten our planet. With new technologies at hand, scientists around the world are now working to understand the internal processes of plants that drive photosynthesis. Program Promotes African Links, Diversity in Plant Sciences From Cornell University The Cornell Assistantship for Horticulture in Africa (CAHA), a program that brings master's students from sub-Saharan Africa to Cornell to complete doctorate degrees in horticulture, has now added a second assistantship for African Americans, with the goal of increasing diversity in the plant sciences — a field that lacks minority representation. CAHA began in 2006 thanks to the vision of and a gift from horticulture professor emeritus Chris Wien. This semester, the program — which admits one scholar for each assistantship until that student completes his or her doctorate — has brought its fourth African doctoral student to Cornell. Now, a second gift from Wien has provided funding for an African American master's student from the U.S. or Canada to complete a doctorate at Cornell and conduct dissertation research primarily in sub-Saharan Africa under the supervision of an Africa-based advisor through an institution there. Diverse Forests Are Cool: Promoting Diverse Forests to Mitigate Carbon Emissions and Climate Change From the Journal of Sustainable Agriculture and Environment Global restoration and reforestation programs and their targets have inspired both unparalleled enthusiasm worldwide and intense scientific criticism and debate regarding their feasibility and implementation. In that vein, Beugnon et al. would like to emphasize the potential of increasing existing forest diversity to enhance climate change mitigation by increasing aboveground and belowground carbon storage.   The Signal Connect with ASPB American Society of Plant Biologists 15501 Monona Drive  |  Rockville, MD 20855-2768 USA  301-251-0560  |  Click here to access our Terms and Privacy Statement  |  www.aspb.org The Signal is produced in affiliation with Multiview, Inc. Disclaimer: The media articles and/or advertisements featured in The Signal do not express or reflect the opinions of the American Society of Plant Biologists or any employee thereof. Hailey Golden, Director of Publishing, Multiview, 469-420-2630 | Download media kit Tory Barringer, Assistant Executive Editor, Multiview, 469-420-2660 | Contribute News Click here to unsubscribe.  Learn how to add us to your safe sender list so our emails get to your inbox. 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