Rust fungi are a major cause of cereal yield losses worldwide requiring frequent fungicide applications in case crop resistance is overcome by new pathogen variants.
Cytosolic Ca2+ signals and changes in pH are universal signaling elements that couple a wide range of stimuli to their characteristic responses in plants. Despite decades of intensive research, it is still poorly understood.
Since 2000, oil palm cultivation has generated considerable controversy: more than 20 million ha of plantations have been linked with deforestation, burning, a high carbon footprint, biodiversity loss and environmental pollution from the palm oil industry.
In response to plant disease as a severe limiting factor in crop production, genomics-informed surveillance promises to support crop protection and biosecurity efforts.
The development of iron enriched “biofortified” crops is a sustainable way of increasing iron intakes at no additional cost to growers and food manufacturers.
In this talk, I will provide a unified review of approaches and explain their close interrelationships, emphasizing that all approaches rely on the standard error of the quantity of interest, most often a pairwise difference of two means.
Timor-Leste is a beautiful island nation in the north west of Australia and is an important neighbour. This talk will introduce Timor-Leste from various perspectives. It will highlight the importance of biosecurity to Timor-Leste’s economy and why this matters to Australia.
Synthetic chemistry and synthetic biology offer complementary tools for manipulating the 3D architecture and function of biomolecules. I will outline two different projects that exemplify our hybrid chemical biology approach, highlighting divergent applications in catalysis and cancer therapy.
Genomes have a highly organised architecture (non-random organisation of functional and non-functional genetic elements within chromosomes) that is essential for many biological functions, particularly, gene expression and reproduction.
During nitrogen-fixing symbiosis, soil bacteria called rhizobia induce the formation of root nodules on legume roots, in which they fix atmospheric nitrogen that the plant can use as a nitrogen source.
In my project I have examined the roles and interplay of the plant signalling factors, flavonoids, reactive oxygen species (ROS), and cytokinin in establishment of symbiotic infection of rhizobia in the roots of the model legume Medicago truncatula.
Agricultural crop production is continually challenged by plant-pathogenic fungi, jeopardizing global food security. Central to plant-fungal interactions are small proteins called effectors, which can be secreted by pathogens into plant cells to promote disease.
Jenny Mortimer is Associate Professor of Plant Synthetic Biology at the University of Adelaide, Australia, in the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine & The Waite Research Institute.
One of society’s greatest challenges is sequestering vast amounts of carbon to avoid dangerous climate change without driving competition for land and resources.