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I bet plants look good on the dancefloor

February 22, 2012
Dancing with plants

Plants don’t do much all day except sitting around and photosynthesising.Right? Wrong!! Plants move constantly, but much slower than animals. Therefore they manage to trick us by pretending to be really boring. But if you put up a hidden camera, take a picture every minute or hour and put it together to a time-lapse video, they won’t be able to fool you any longer. The “Plants in Motion” website created by Roger P. Hangarter has a really nice collection of plant time-lapse videos, ranging from germination to tropism (directional movement in response to an external signal such as light...

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Faces of Plant Cell Biology: Dr Nathalie Leborgne-Castel

February 21, 2012
Nathalie LC

This post is part of the series “Faces of Plant Cell Biology”. In this series I am posting answers of plant cell biologists at all stages of their career to a set of five questions. If you are a plant cell biologist and would like to complete my questionnaire, please email me at anne@plantcellbiology.com. Seriously, please do – I am slowly but surely running out of colleagues to pester!  Today’s Face of Plant Cell Biology is Dr Nathalie Leborgne-Castel from the Université de Bourgogne in France. Nathalie was kind enough to allow us to use her fantastic tomography and plasmolysis...

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10 signs you might be a plant scientist

February 19, 2012
10 signs you might be a plant scientist

How many of these sound familiar? 1)   When you open a new review about a conserved eukaryotic protein family, you first perform a whole document search for “plant” and “arabidopsis”. 2)   People assume that you know the name of every plant and ask for your advice on growing vegetables. 3)   You have looked at Monstera leaves and wondered if you could use these for your expression experiments. 4)   You had a brown thumb before you were forced to care for your own plants for your experiments. 5)   When you are in a restaurant, you automatically check if the table...

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It’s always referee 3

February 16, 2012
It’s always referee 3

I have discovered http://memegenerator.net/. Expect more in the future. If you come up with a good plant science one, let me know and I will feature it here!

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Faces of Plant Cell Biology: Dr John Runions

February 15, 2012
John Runions

John Runions is a little bit like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – only that his two identities both have a Dr title. Most of his time he spends working, teaching and playing with the microscopes at Oxford Brookes University. But when nobody is watching, he puts on his cape of knowledge, takes his sword of science enthusiasm and leaps on air as “Dr Molecule” for BBC Radio Oxford. John’s website is like a little treasure chest, full with microscopy images and movies. You can even watch one of his presentations from the last GARNet meeting 2011 on YouTube...

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Roses are red – but they don’t need to be, if you know how to use food dyes and Fibonacci

February 14, 2012
Rainbow Rose

Happy Valentine’s Day! Looking for something more special than “just” a bunch of flowers? Read my post at the “Annals of Botany” blog to find out how to make rainbow roses. http://aobblog.com/2012/02/roses-are-red-but-they-dont-need-to-be-if-you-know-how-to-use-food-dyes-and-fibonacci/   A rainbow rose. Photo by Ryan Amos

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The scale of the universe will blow your mind

February 11, 2012
The scale of the universe will blow your mind

You MUST look at this website. No, I am serious – you MUST, even if you only have a minute to spare. It has a slider which you can move to explore the size of objects from quantum foam to our observable universe. It will blow your mind. Make sure to click on objects and they will reveal more information. Isn’t our universe amazing?!

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We have more in common than meets the eye – human and plant cells

February 10, 2012
We have more in common than meets the eye – human and plant cells

It’s Friday and therefore I present you with two beautiful animations about the inner workings of a cell. Bring a packed lunch, your camera and a big bag of excitement and hop on the tour bus guiding you through an animal and a plant cell. “Over there you can see the world’s largest mitochondrion. Few people know that it was the inspiration for the Michelin man…” I hope that these videos will not only show you how complex and fascinating cells are, but also how much similarities there are between animal and plant cells. Cells rock!

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How to make your own CSI gel electrophoresis apparatus

February 8, 2012
How to make your own CSI gel electrophoresis apparatus

This video explains how to build a gel electrophoresis apparatus, prepare an agarose gel and use it to separate food colouring dyes – and you can do all that in your kitchen! Very cool!

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Faces of Plant Cell Biology: Dr Petra Boevink

February 7, 2012
Faces of Plant Cell Biology: Dr Petra Boevink

If someone asked me about the three most important papers which my research is based on, I might have to think for a minute or so about two of them. But my choice for the third one (or first one, if you wish) would be very clear: “Boevink et al. 1998!”   Petra Boevink, Karl Oparka, Simon Santa Cruz, Barry Martin, Alan Betteridge, Chris Hawes (1998). “Stacks on tracks: the plant Golgi apparatus travels on an actin/ER network”. Plant Journal 15(3): 441-447.               In this study the researchers linked green fluorescent protein (GFP)...

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