All episodes

It’s autumn! We just came back from a trip to Berlin’s botanical garden and record for the first time ever remotely – so forgive us for any technical hiccups. This week, we got a bit lost in a long discussion about the usefulness of committees as safeguards concerning ethical questions and we promise that we’re usually not that angry.

We talk quite a bit about airports in the beginning but actually this episode is about CRISPR (yay!), favourite plants (yaaaaaayyy!) and fun stuff (yyyyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy!). It’s a good episode.

Joram’s paper: Decaestecker, W., Andrade Buono, R., Pfeiffer, M., Vangheluwe, N., Jourquin, J., Karimi, M., … Jacobs, T. B. (2019). CRISPR-TSKO: A Technique for Efficient Mutagenesis in Specific Cell Types, Tissues, or Organs in Arabidopsis. The Plant Cell, tpc.00454.2019.

Tegan’s favourite plant is Gloeomargarita lithophora.

Joram presents the work and life of Enid MacRobbie who pioneered the use of radio tracers to measure fluxes across membranes.

Fun Stuff

Spiders Can Fly Hundreds of Miles Using Electricity (The Atlantic)

If The Zombie Apocalypse Happens, This Is Where Scientists Say You Should Go (iflscience)

Plants don’t have feelings and aren’t conscious, a biologist argues (ScienceNews)

Was Heidi the Octopus Really Dreaming? (NY times)

These mysterious vessels are among the world’s oldest baby bottles (ScienceMag)

Plant cells-based biological matrix composites (BioArxiv)

An experimental test of the ovulatory homolog model of female orgasm (PNAS)

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Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

Tegan was wearing beautiful earrings. Unfortunately for you, they happen to make a nice little clinking sound that you might or might not pick up from the recording. Also I had terrible discipline in touching noisy wrapping paper. We’re terribly sorry, but the episode is worth it, I promise. 😘

Tegan’s paper: Fang, J., Zhang, F., Wang, H., Wang, W., Zhao, F., Li, Z., … Chu, C. (2019). Ef-cd locus shortens rice maturity duration without yield penalty. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(37), 18717–18722. 🔓

Help me win the community award for the Fast Forward Science Contest by liking the video on youtube and leaving a comment. Thank you!

Joram’s favourite plant is bay tree or Laurus nobilis.

Tegan presents the life and work of Janaki Ammal. Here are two more articles on her: Smithsonian, The Better India

Fun Stuff:

What the F*ck, Australia.

Ellen Airhart just started a great new podcast on Plant Crimes. Find her Instagram here and here.

UK roadsides on verge of becoming wildlife corridors, say experts (guardian)

‘Sneezing’ plants may spread pathogens to their neighbors (Science News)

Justin Bieber has cats.

Have you read our cool article on mitochondria?

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Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

Oh no, GMO! Did you know that your GMO-free peanuts are far from being free from transgenes? Also they’re full of chemicals, most of which are taken up by the body and used in the human metabolism. Beware the mighty peanut!

Animal monogamy is overrated, especially in swans. Swans have worms are always angry. Don’t be a swan. Be an Arabidopsis. (we were both sleep deprived by the time we recorded this episode, so i guess you do the same to adjust to our mindset)

We are not only achievers in science, we are officially high achievers in science. Don’t believe us? Ask Stefanie, she’ll tell you. This week we bring you research on agrivoltaics, facts about tulips and two tired podcasters. Please enjoy.

We had a picnic (not during the podcast, but just before the podcast) and it was really nice. Consider having a picnic yourself, and while your picnicing, listen to this episode on repeat over your car stereo (leave the doors open for enhanced sound). This is how all Berliners spend their summer.

Tegan’s paper: Zhao, E. M., Suek, N., Wilson, M. Z., Dine, E., Pannucci, N. L., Gitai, Z., … Toettcher, J. E. (2019). Light-based control of metabolic flux through assembly of synthetic organelles. Nature Chemical Biology, 15(6), 589–597. 🔒

Joram’s favourite plant is Aristolochia arborea because it mimics mushrooms with its flowers to attract gnats and abuse them as pollinators without sharing nectar.

Tegan presents Mary Emilie Holmes who was the first woman to be elected a fellow in the Geological Society of America.

Study on extreme self-citation: Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database (nature.com)

Cool flying seed: A seed flying like a bullet: ballistic seed dispersal in Chinese witch-hazel (Hamamelis mollis OLIV., Hamamelidaceae) (Royal Society of Publishing) 🔒 and the video we’re talking about: Watch this plant fire seeds with bulletlike force (sciencemag.org)

Mexican shrimp plant is false hops in German (Justicia brandegeeana).

Nicole Kidman likes to take their cats in backpacks.

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Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

We’re busy with applying for jobs and still we’re making more episodes for you. Aren’t we nice? We’re really nice. Plants are also nice and so is plant research. We talk about plant research so this podcast is also nice.

What? Another episode? I thought we were done with episodes. Okay okay, here we go again. Plant science. We love it. You love us. You must love plant science.

Tegan’s paper: He, J., Ye, W., Choi, D. S., Wu, B., Zhai, Y., Guo, B., … Ma, J. (2019). Structural analysis of Phytophthora suppressor of RNA silencing 2 (PSR2) reveals a conserved modular fold contributing to virulence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(16), 8054–8059.

Little edit note: Phytophthora is not actually a regular fungus, it is an oomycete, which is a fungus-like eukaryote.

Joram’s favourite plant are mangroves.

Starting this week we want to recognise diversity in plant science. The first person we want draw your attention to is Barbara McClintock.

We hit Earth overshoot day in late July. Yayyyyyyyy! 🎉 Well done, everyone!

Excel is responsible for 20% of typos in scientific data. Don’t use Excel unless you absolutely have to.

Cat sharks do fluorescence on their skin.

Cool tool to convert protein IDs into nice graphics is named Illustrate.

Kary Mullis died earlier this year. He was the inventor of PCR, a crucial tool for modern molecular biology. His personal views were quite controversial.

Why do cats eat grass? To get rid of intestinal parasites.

The rise and decline of bubble tea in Germany as told by the German podcast Rice and Shine.

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Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

If you are a plant you are probably indifferent to podcasts. So I’ll just assume you’re a human with ears who also likes podcasts. Boy, are you in for a treat because this here is a new episode of a podcast. What a coincidence! We talk about plant research and non-plant research. Excited? We are too!

Joram’s paper: Zhang, W., Corwin, J. A., Copeland, D. H., Feusieran’s, J., Eshbaugh, R., Cook, D. E., … Kliebenstein, D. J. (2019). Plant–necrotroph co-transcriptome networks illuminate a metabolic battlefield. ELife, 8.

Tegan’s favourite plant is Rhizanphella as featured in this article by Chris J. Thorogood et al.

The 180 million DNA barcode project

Bioplastics are not that much better than regular plastic (probably). Go and listen to the Plastisphere podcast, it is really good, especially the episode about bioplastics. Also this story covers a newly developed edible cover for food to extend shelf life.

This tweet triggered a discussion between us about overselling science stories. What do you think? Are researchers overselling their research to inflate the importance of their work or is it PR who takes it out of context?

Finally, no more cat killing for research.

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Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

Hello and welcome to another podcast episode. We talk about antagonistic patronuseses, thoroughly researched favourite plants and so many fun facts. Like so many, I can’t even count them.

For the first half, Tegan is pretty much eating ice cream and Joram is talking about plant science to himself – and to you people out there. So be kind and support Joram in his struggle and listen to his tales. You might also have ice cream to go with it.

Joram’s paper: Sun, Y., Wollman, A. J. M., Huang, F., Leake, M. C., & Liu, L.-N. (2019). Single-Organelle Quantification Reveals Stoichiometric and Structural Variability of Carboxysomes Dependent on the Environment. The Plant Cell, 31(7), 1648 LP – 1664.

Tegan’s favourite plant is the hog peanut.

Fun Stuff

Support biodiversity hotspots over at conservation.org.

Amazing story about biosphere 2 as heard on the nice try! podcast.

Make sure to cook your beans properly!

Off-target effects in CRISPR analysed by a meta study – turns out there aren’t many.

Goats can understand… Taylor Swift Goat Version.

Crops in tight spots – a cool book about gardening on balconies and so on.

The untold story of antimicrobial peptides engineered into trees.

Well done, Hatty.

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Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

What is more fun than talking about molecular research? I hope you’re shouting now “diving deep into the horrors of the climate crisis!” because you’re right. In this fun and upbeat episode we wonder whether we can stop the climate crisis by planting trees. Can you guess the answer?

How not to get murdered? Will plants save you? No. If you ever get murdered, Tegan has some no legally binding advice for you. Apart from life-saving murder prevention tips we have a new paper on wheat research for you and also a favourite plant.

Joram took an electric scooter through the best city in the world to join Tegan in her kitchen for yet another episode about plants and pipettes and things that are fun.

Tegan’s paper: Weits, D. A., Kunkowska, A. B., Kamps, N. C. W., Portz, K. M. S., Packbier, N. K., Nemec Venza, Z., … Licausi, F. (2019). An apical hypoxic niche sets the pace of shoot meristem activity. Nature, 569(7758), 714–717.

The root article we published last week (or the week before if you’re listening to this one week later (don’t listen to this later than that or this statement will be inaccurate)).

Joram’s favourite plant: Stylidium graminifolium or trigger grass plant

Welcome to the age of collective narcissism

Go and support your LGBTSTEM friends today on July 5th! And remember to support any other QUILTBAG friends as well!

The age of protein in paleontology

Don’t watch prometheus, it has stupid DNA vision.

Fun cat fact: cats kill 1.1 billion mammals every year in Australia

Our blog post on 1080, a poison to kill off invasive species

Follow us on twitter, instagram and facebook! If you like our podcast, review us on iTunes!

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!