Tags: plants

The Simons Foundation has awarded $8.4 million to support collaborative research in coastal tidal marshes, via a cluster of seven linked project awards through its Life Sciences division. The project, “Ecosystem on the Edge: How Coastal Marsh Plants and Microbes Thrive in an Oscillating Environment,” is led by Zoe Cardon at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in collaboration with Jennifer Bowen (Northeastern University), Inke Forbrich (…

Sharing disciplinary expertise and opinion on issues of the day are important constituent elements of public scholarship. Franklin College faculty and graduate students do their part month in, month out, enhancing the reputation of UGA and Franklin College in the process. A sample of the many stories across the media featuring our colleagues:   What Hollywood gets right-and wrong-about real-life AI – Stephen Mihm, professor and head of the…

Recent discoveries in the field of epigenetics, the study of inheritance of traits that occur without changing the DNA sequence, have shown that chronological age in mammals correlates with epigenetic changes that accumulate during the lifetime of an individual. In humans, this observation has led to the development of epigenetic clocks, which are now extensively used as biomarkers of aging. While these clocks work accurately from birth until…

An incredible resource of knowledge about flora from around the world – some very familiar, others less so – positioned in a corner of North Campus is a wealth of tastes, cures, and indigenous wisdom. Students in many FYO courses, as well as staff from around Franklin College, have enjoyed and learned from tours of Latin American Ethnobotanical Garden courtesy of its director Paul Duncan.  Research Communications presents an intro complete…

Earth system scientists have identified another culprit (other than rain) that causes a river to overflow its banks: leafy plants. In a study published today in Nature Climate Change, the UCI researchers describe the emerging role of ecophysiology in riparian flooding. As an adaptation to an overabundance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, trees, plants and grasses constrict their stomatal pores to regulate the amount of…

Bioinformatics doctoral candidate Annie Kwon, working with UGA professor Natarajan Kannan and a team of researchers, is first author on a recent paper revealing that a class of enzymes previously thought to be useless is prevalent across all domains of life in fact serves an important purpose in cell communications: The study, published in Science Signaling, evolved from Kwon’s research trip to the University of…

Shaza Mehdi tried diagnosing blighted flowers by Googling images of plant diseases and comparing those images with the sick roses, sparking an idea that led her to come up with PlantMD — a smartphone app that can diagnose a plant disease with the snap of a photo: After three months of researching, coding and getting some help from her high school teachers, Mehdi launched the app. “PlantMD works when you take a picture of a…

University of Georgia doctoral candidate Jordan Russell was awarded a fellowship by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program. The program prepares graduate students for science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) careers critically important to the Department of Energy Office of Science mission by providing graduate thesis research opportunities at DOE laboratories in areas…

A new breeding technique using a plant's own DNA could produce crops that are more resistant to drought and disease: A team of University of Georgia researchers has developed a new way to breed plants with better traits. By introducing a human protein into the model plant species Arabidopsis thaliana, researchers found that they could selectively activate silenced genes already present within the plant. Using this method to increase diversity…

A research team led by professor of biochemistry and molecular biology Debra Mohnen has discovered that manipulation of the same gene in poplar trees and switchgrass produced plants that grow better and are more efficiently converted to biofuels: Due to the composition of plant cell walls, plant material is not efficiently broken down or deconstructed to the basic sugars that are converted to biofuels. In a paper published today…

Distinguished Research Professor Kelly Dawe in the department of genetics is principal investigator on a new project to sequence the genetic diversity of the world's largest cash crop: When the human genome was first sequenced in 2001, the project focused on a single individual. Since that time, several new genomes have been assembled and additional genetic data have been generated for thousands of individuals, producing a more complete picture…

In large-enrollment courses, Franklin faculty continue to be instrumental in pioneering access to free, online textbooks to help students save money and to improve teaching: The University System of Georgia (USG) has been a nationwide leader in using free online textbooks, and UGA has been at the forefront of those efforts, helping its students save more than $2.5 million since 2013. The bulk of that effort has come through a partnership with…

Great news for students in our introductory biology courses: The University of Georgia Center for Teaching and Learning is looking at ways to save students money by offering free e-textbooks for introductory biology courses at UGA through a $25,000 University System of Georgia Incubator grant awarded this summer. UGA students who take the entry-level biology courses pay around $97 for a new biology textbook. This grant will collectively save…