News & events
News
A plant biologist and geochemist from The Australian National University have both been recognised for their outstanding contributions to their fields of science.
One of the illustrious founder members of RSBS passed away on 11 April 2021. Jeremy David Pickett-Heaps FAA, FRS worked in the (then) Department of Developmental Biology from 1968-70. His surveys of ultrastructural aspects of cell division in green algae (many collected from Lake Burley Griffin and Sullivan’s Creek) led him to a new formulation of the evolution of the Plant Kingdom, a landmark contribution in the plant sciences, now confirmed and fleshed out by sequencing data.
Florence Danila of Australian National University’s ARC Centre of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis has discovered how plants improve photosynthesis by trapping carbon dioxide inside cell layers.
ANU experts have found a way to precisely measure a crop’s water loss through its skin, not just the pores on their leaves.
A new study shows that long-term drought in biodiverse Amazonian tropical rainforest can fundamentally change the soil, increasing the abundance of an unusual group of fungal species that may help the trees resist drought, and by altering the underlying biogeochemistry.
Three researchers from ANU who've changed the way we see the world have been recognised for their ground-breaking work with prestigious awards from The Australian Academy of Science.
Events
Plants that exhibit moisture-regulated root branching, called hydropatterning, are able to detect spatial differences in water distribution around their root growth zone, which leads to pre-patterning of lateral root primordia towards regions of higher water availability.
Rust diseases are a serious threat to cereals and other crops worldwide. The interaction between flax and the flax rust fungus, Melampsora lini, is a model pathosystem helping us to understand the molecular basis of rust fungal pathogenicity in plants.
The rate of photosynthesis and plant growth is often rate limited by the activity of the CO2-fixing enzyme Ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase oxygenase (Rubisco).
Plants are sessile organisms and are therefore unable to seek out environmental conditions optimal for their growth and development.
Plant scientists are in a race against time to adapt modern crops to future environments, many of which are predicted to be hotter and drier.
Synthetic gene circuits are a new biotechnological framework for the generation of organisms harbouring user-defined gene expression patterns and other genetic functions.