Plant root breakthrough leads to Science paper – Bipin Pandey and Rahul Bhosale tell us how it happened!

Dr. Bipin Kumar Pandey (above) is a Research Fellow in the School of Biosciences at the University of Nottingham. He received a 12-month PhD+ award from the Future Food Beacon in April 2018. Dr. Rahul Bhosale is a Nottingham Research Fellow in Phenomics and Functional Genomics at the Future Food Beacon, University of Nottingham. He …

Chasing auxin through the plant – international collaboration leads to Nature paper – by Anthony Bishopp

Photo (right) by Rita Astrovich on Unsplash Anthony Bishopp is a Royal Society University Research Fellow, Faculty of Science, University of Nottingham When Charles Darwin noticed that plants bend towards light, he performed a series of experiments showing that a mobile signal produced in the growing tip caused the plants to bend at the base. 160 years …

The real arsenate reductase stands up! – Is this the end of the HAC story?

Warning: this blog contains some hardcore plant science. Look away now if this is a bit much!  This blog celebrates the publication in the Journal of Experimental Botany of a new paper about arsenate reductase in plants. Dr. Sina Fischer of the Future Food Beacon is the first author on the study and performed much of the work, assisted by a number of co-authors. including Dr Paulina Flis who leads Prof. Salt’s Ionomics Facility. Prof. David E. …

Root growth in a complex microbiome – Dr Gabriel Castrillo’s paper in Nature

This blog celebrates the achievement of our very own Dr. Gabriel Castrillo in becoming co-first author on a paper in the leading journal, nature. Everybody at The Future Food Beacon takes delight in seeing Gabriel’s work going from strength to strength. His new paper is called A single bacterial genus maintains root growth in a …

Blue copper in Casparian strips: the work of Dr Guilhem Reyt

Dr Guilhem Reyt is a Research Fellow working with the Future Food Beacon. This brief blog provides links to recent coverage of his work and, most importantly, to his new paper in Current Biology. Locked out during lockdown Any scientist who was locked out of their laboratory during the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 will be …

How do plant roots branch towards water?

Plant roots need to forage for water and nutrients in the soil. These key resources are not distributed equally through the soil so plants therefore have to send their roots towards the best available sources of water and nutrients. If plants couldn’t flexibly adapt to changing conditions in their environments, they would struggle to thrive …