Taylorlab Blogs

What is it?

Glyphosate is a non-selective herbicide that inhibits an enzyme involved in three amino acids biosynthesis (phenylalanine, tyrosine and tryptophan). Glyphosate is mainly absorbed through the leaves, and then internally distributed to rest of the plant. The enzyme inhibition causes a diversion in the energy from other processes, and after few a days the plant turns yellow and dies.

Why it is so popular?

Illusive and often overlooked, the microbiome is often referred to as the 2nd genome of plants, due to the discovery of its profound impact on plant fitness. The microbiome consists of the soil surrounding the roots of plants with the bacteria, viruses and fungi it contains. Last week, I, along with over 20 others from UC Davis, visited a company harnessing the beneficial powers of the microbiome: Bioconsortia.

Bioconsortia are a small venture capital company based in Davis developing microbial products for improving plant performance.

A tradition that has been running for over a century in Davis, this year’s picnic day was the first in which we participated and it was a great success. There is a wide range of events at picnic day including Doxie Derby, cockroach racing, DNA extractions, chick hatching, a petting zoo, sports games and so many more. Our lab group, along with an estimated 75,000 visitors, enjoyed a range of events. My favourite each year is always the parade but others in our group enjoyed cow milking and battle of the bands.

I attended two impressive participatory research seminars hosted by 2019 Plant Sciences Winter Colloquium and the Plant Breeding Center at UCD. The first one was by Dr. Julie Dawson, University of Wisconsin-Madison, about developing organic culinary varieties from seed to kitchen. The second one was by Dr. Tareke Berhe who breeds “super grain”, Teff with aim to produce a local supply for restaurants in Sacramento, CA. Participatory Research increases the involvement of farmers in research.

As biologists, we are accustomed working with various biotic and abiotic conditions. One may get a result when growing a population in a controlled environment but a completely different result when repeating the experiment in the glasshouse and another result in the field. It is our job to tease apart the differences in conditions to figure out why our results differ between experiments. What environmental conditions have changed? Is it stress from pests in the field? Is it that constricted roots in the controlled environment and glasshouse causing a stress effect?

Brexit is a challenge without precedents that may produce big changes in British agriculture. The term agriculture not only describes farmers growing food crops but also processing, infrastructure, suppliers, sellers etc. that form a complex supply chain to UK consumers. All of these sectors will be affected when Brexit is executed and now there is the added possibility that the UK will leave the EU without a deal.

Arguably the best day of the year in Davis is Picnic Day and it’s nearly here! Picnic day is a day where the university community come together to host a giant event to exhibit the excellent work carried out at the university. The event is targeted towards the whole community; prospective and current students, families, alumni, staff, faculty, and the greater Davis and regional communities.

If people think of the UK in the winter, Dickensian images come to mind of rolling hills covered in snow and maybe even images of days when the river Thames would freeze over and fairs would be held on the ice. In reality, this was only the case until the 19th Century but today snow in the UK rarely lasts more than a couple of days and the worst we have to deal with is rain. Moving to California, palm trees and beautifully sunny landscapes came to mind. Again, those picturesque images aren’t the whole story.

A new analysis in Taylor Lab suggests that long- term, multi-generational response of plants to rising CO2  are similar to those found in single generation FACE experiments, with consequences for continued global greening and future higher rates of photosynthesis.

Time-traveling plants that could move forward and backwards across the decades would be extremely valuable in understanding how these photosynthesizing organisms are likely to respond to the altered conditions predicted as a consequence of anthropogenic climate change.