News & events
News
An international study has found a drought alarm system that first appeared in freshwater algae may have enabled plants to move from water to land more than 450 million years ago – a big evolutionary step that led to the emergence of land animals, including humans.
Human error, not human biology, largely accounts for the apparent decline of mortality among the very old, according to a new report by Saul Newman of the Research School of Biology, ANU. The result casts doubt on the hypothesis that human longevity can be greatly extended beyond current limits.
A scientific breakthrough intended to help boost the yields of food crops has solved a long-standing question of how cyanobacteria, known as blue-green algae, builds the carbon-capturing engines called carboxysomes in a protein liquid droplet formation.
Susanne von Caemmerer is recognised as a worldwide expert for using mathematics to represent the process by which plants convert sunlight, gases and water into sugars and oxygen – photosynthesis.
Fred Chow has dedicated his working life to the study of photosynthesis.
Sam Periyannan was born and brought up on a small sugar cane farm in Southern India. He never dreamed he would become a crop researcher, rather than a cane farmer.
Events
Plants don’t exist naturally in isolation. They are surrounded by, colonised by, and interact with, microorganisms.
Our research explores the concept of priming-induced stress memory in plants, where exposure to mild or non-lethal stress events equips plants to better confront subsequent, more severe stressors.
The simultaneous measurement of meteorological variables along with ecosystem physiology has improved our understanding of how native and managed ecosystems respond to external forcings like climate change.
C4 photosynthesis is one of the most prolific complex traits in the biosphere, having independently evolved over 70 times in flowering plants. Understanding C4 evolution is providing insights into how evolution builds complex life forms that can transform the biosphere.
Will ecosystems maintain their biodiversity and function under global environmental change, and continue to sequester carbon and slow climate change?
Photosynthesis and leaf respiration are key metabolic processes for plant growth and their carbon exchange with the atmosphere are the largest within the global carbon cycle.