Description: This presentation is part of the faculty lecture series UNT Speaks Out on Water Conservation. In this presentation, the author discusses the rivers of Cape Horn, Chile and biocultural conservation and education.

Description: This report discusses the Comparative Assessment of Peer Review (CAPR) project outcomes. Public funding agencies are required to demonstrate accountability to their government funders (e.g., Congress) as well as to the public. Some agencies - including the US National Science Foundation (NSF) - have used broader societal impacts criteria as part of the review process of grant proposals in order to connect scientific research to societal needs. But these agencies have often encountered questions from scientists and engineers for how to integrate such demands for broader societal impacts into their research proposals. In an effort to help clarify the idea of broader impacts, in 2010 NSF and Congress proposed a list of national needs that NSF-funded research would be required to meet. But was this the best solution? This report discusses the authors' research.

Description: This article discusses a web-based multi-genome synteny viewer for customized data. Background: Web-based synteny visualization tools are important for sharing data and revealing patterns of complicated genome conservation and rearrangements. Such tools should allow biologists to upload genomic data for their own analysis. This requirement is critical because individual biologists are generating large amounts of genomic sequences that quickly overwhelm any centralized web resources to collect and display all those data. Recently, the authors published a web-based synteny viewer, GSV, which was designed to satisfy the above requirement. However, GSV can only compare two genomes at a given time. Extending the functionality of GSV to visualize multiple genomes is important to meet the increasing demand of the research community. Results: The authors have developed a multi-Genome Synteny Viewer (mGSV). Similar to GSV, mGSV is a web-based tool that allows users to upload their own genomic data files for visualization. Multiple genomes can be presented in a single integrated view with an enhanced user interface. Users can navigate through all selected genomes in either pairwise or multiple viewing mode to examine conserved genomic regions as well as the accompanying genome annotations. Besides serving users who manually interact with the web server, ...

Description: This article discusses geminivirus-mediated delivery of florigen. Abstract: Background: Plant architecture and the timing and distribution of reproductive structures are fundamental agronomic traits shaped by patterns of determinate and indeterminate growth. Florigen, encoded by FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) in Arabidopsis and SINGLE FLOWER TRUSS (SFT) in tomato, acts as a general growth hormone, advancing determinate growth. Domestication of upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) converted it from a lanky photoperiodic perennial to a highly inbred, compact day-neutral plant that is managed as an annual row-crop. This dramatic change in plant architecture provides a unique opportunity to analyze the transition from perennial to annual growth. Methodology/Principle Findings: To explore these architectural changes, the authors addressed the role of day-length upon flowering in an ancestral, perennial accession and in a domesticated variety of cotton. Using a disarmed Cotton leaf crumple virus (CLCrV) as a transient expression system, the authors delivered FT to both cotton accessions. Ectopic expression of FT in ancestral cotton mimicked the effects of day-length, promoting photoperiod-independent flowering, precocious determinate architecture, and lanceolate leaf shape. Domesticated cotton infected with FT demonstrated more synchronized fruiting and enhanced "annualization". Transient expression of FT also facilitated simple crosses between wild photoperiodic and domesticated day-neutral accessions, ...

Description: This article discusses multiple domains in MtENOD8 protein. Abstract: Symbiotic nitrogen fixation occurs in nodules, specialized organs on the roots of legumes. Within nodules, host plant cells are infected with rhizobia that are encapsulated by a plant-derived membrane forming a novel organelle, the symbiosome. In Medicago truncatula, the symbiosome consists of the symbiosome membrane (SymM), a single rhizobium, and the soluble space between them, called the symbiosome space (Syms). The SymS is enriched with plant-derived proteins, including the MtENOD8 protein. Here, the authors present evidence from GFP fusion experiments that the MtENOD8 protein contains at least three symbiosome targeting domains, including its N-terminal signal peptide (SP). When ectopically expressed in non-nodulated root tissue, the MtENOD8 SP delivers GFP to the vacuole. During the course of nodulation, there is a nodule-specific re-direction MtENOD8-SP-GFP from the vacuole to punctate intermediates and subsequently to symbiosomes, with re-direction of MtENOD8-SP-GFP from the vacuole to punctate intermediates preceding intracellular rhizobial infection. Experiments with Medicago mutants having defects in rhizobial infection and symbiosome development demonstrated that the MtNIP/LATD gene is required for re-direction of the MtENOD8-SP-GFP from the vacuoles to punctate intermediates in nodules. The authors' evidence shows that MtENOD8 has evolved redundant targeting sequences for ...