Archives: Episodes

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.… Read more

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. … Read more

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? … Read more

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.… Read more

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)).… Read more

Despite a MASSIVE thunderstorm we came together and recorded episode 10 for you guys. Aren’t we great? Yes, we are.

Tegan’s paper: Engineered PPR proteins as inducible switches to activate the expression of chloroplast transgenes, Margarita Rojas, Qiguo Yu, Rosalind Williams-Carrier, Pal Maliga & Alice Barkan, Nature Plants, volume 5, pages505–511 (2019) 

Joram’s favourite plant has the biggest leaves. This palm is a total cheat so let’s praise giant rhubarb instead.

Our listener question of the day: do you think we can eat everything that dinosaurs could eat?… Read more

This week, we’re trying something new! Instead of doing a longer episode with two papers, we’re doing just one paper and instead release weekly! All thanks to us benevolent researchers listening to the voices of you, the common people of instagram.

This week, Joram is nerding out about Harry Bittercress, the newest star on the firmament of young adult research articles. Tegan’s favourite plant is super slick and super endangered and then we have an app for you and some feline fun facts.… Read more

Heyyy it’s another episode of the plants and pipettes podcast! This week, we have something special for you: we talked to Ratan Chopra, researcher at the University of Minnesota about his work domesticating pennycress. Sounds familiar? Yes! We presented his research on the blog and now had the chance to talk to him directly.

Ratan works in the lab of David Marks who is pioneering and driving forward the work on pennycress. Using its close family relationship to Arabidopsis, he and his group were able to quickly advance the knowledge and domestication of pennycress, turning it from a weed into a soon-to-be crop plant.… Read more

Welcome again to another episode of our little podcast. This week, we’re talking about the intricacies of Saffron and

Tegan’s paper: Schmidt, T. , Heitkam, T. , Liedtke, S. , Schubert, V. and Menzel, G. (2019), Adding color to a century‐old enigma: multi‐color chromosome identification unravels the autotriploid nature of saffron (Crocus sativus) as a hybrid of wild Crocus cartwrightianus cytotypes. New Phytol, 222: 1965-1980. doi:10.1111/nph.15715

Joram’s paper: The Role of Plastidic Trigger Factor Serving Protein Biogenesis in Green Algae and Land Plants, Marina Rohr, Fabian Ries, Claudia Herkt, Vincent Leon Gotsmann, Lisa Désirée Westrich, Karin Gries, Raphael Trösch, Jens Christmann, Frederic Chaux-Jukic, Martin Jung, David Zimmer, Timo Mühlhaus, Frederik Sommer, Michael Schroda, Sandro Keller, Torsten Möhlmann, Felix Willmund, Plant Physiology Mar 2019, 179 (3) 1093-1110; DOI: 10.1104/pp.18.01252

The “crouching dragon” protein structure from the paper.… Read more