ARIBIDOPSIS

James Cameron's sci-fi classic Avatar was a long-waited one for movie fans and for me. The first time I watched it was a sophomore of Biochemistry major. On a personal note, this is one of the few movies I watched several times with my dad on TV. Not exactly from the beginning to end  every time, but from a various starting point to the end. Fast forwarded a decade or slightly more than that, I became a plant biologist in the meantime and re-watching the movie brings completely different perspective.  Pandorian Botany The plot starts with the human race to obtain the mineral Unobtanium , which is available in the Pandora . Humans are inclined to have this mineral to solve the energy crisis of earth. But, the native Navi is the obstacle on their way. To conquer the Pandora and their mineral, humans made a base camp to observe them and even created a hybrid combining human and Navi's DNA.  Jake and Neytiri in the Pandorian forest. Movie: Avatar That's the plot. But, watching

Arabidopsis, a model plant, I prefer to call it road side superstar for plant biologist. It grows in every continent and even if you do not want to grow it at all, you will see it on your walkway. Much of our known genetic circuits were possible due to its generous contribution. A smaller genome with a wide range of gene sets to study every possible pathway.  I think myself as an ambassador of Arabidopsis. My doctorate research was entirely dependent on that tiny un-edible plant. My friends used to mock me as I do not have to go to field and entire experiments were going inside the lab. I took that insult and turned it into a sarcastic one. I named my blog Aribidopsis (Arif + Arabidopsis)! Ever since, it is Aribidopsis. Not only my blog, the Twitter handle is also @aribidopsis! Now, it became a brand and sort of my pseudo name as well. No more insult sticks with it, rather a sense of pride.  That's not the point I was planning to write in this blog post. I got distracted,

Who doesn't want to be an astronaut? Flying away from the earth, heading towards moon or Mars. It's certainly the dream of every kid, even some of the grown-up unless they start to give up their dreams and hopes! And, there are reasons why at a certain age and stage people start believing that being-an-astronaut-dream doesn't valid anymore because, in the movies and traditional setup, it has been showing that mathematician, computer programmers, physicists are way ahead of other disciplines to become an astronaut and flying away.  It's time to come out of this concept and look at the perspective through a different lens. Think about that, you are going back and forth between earth and other planets, testing whether there is the existence of life and so on. All this research leads to find out whether there is a way of habitats, which broadly emphasis on LIFE. If we are thinking about start living to Mars, we have to make sure that the other form of life can survive

Plants make their own food using sunlight, carbon dioxide and water. The process is known as photosynthesis. Based on the location and time, the supply of light is variable. We may connect this to our life by simply thinking about a solar energy source for our house. If it rains today, there is no energy to turn the light on for our house. Sometimes it's sunny, sometimes it's cloudy. Apart from that there is other side also, for example: excessive sunlight. During the time of excessive sunlight, plants convert that excessive light into heat energy and release it. It's an amazing self protective mechanism of plant.  Now think about a weather situation where plants are exposed from high light to low light. During the high light condition, plants will release their energy as heat. And shifting to low light or cloudy situation will help them to stop releasing energy as heat and using raw materials only for photosynthesis. You may understand that it's a cycling

Plants have simply two parts. Shoot and Root. Shoot, above the soil, can experience light and root, below the ground, have no physical accessibility to light. Interestingly, root also contains light receptors, known as phytochromes. First question, why root requires photo receptor under the soil?  When shoot is exposed to light, phytochrome B (phyB) induces the expression of HY5 (Elongated Hypocotyl 5), a transcription factor required for root growth. That provides the clue that light is regulating root growth. The next question is how light is transmitted from shoot to root? Two possible answers on that case. It's traveling through signaling molecules or directly transmitted through plant. Auxin, Methyl Jasmonic Acid and Sucrose are known to travel through plant tissues in response to light. But, experiments showed that these molecules are not able to induce the photo activation of phyB and HY5.  It left the remaining possibility, direct transmission of light t

Did you ever wonder how leaf has different color?  Make it simple. Leaf is usually green in color and this color is due to Chlorophyll. But Chlorophyll has much more important job rather than providing green color of leaf. Plants produce their food through photosynthesis, a process of converting sun light to energy, where Chlorophyll plays major role. If we focus about green color, the degradation of Chlorophyll explains the change of leaf color. The first step of Chlorophyll catabolic pathway is the conversion of Chlorophyll a to Pheophytin a. This step is driven by Mg-dechelatase. But, it was unknown, which gene is encoding this Mg-dechelatase? So far mutants identified from Chlorophyll catabolic pathway shows "stay-green" phenotype. This "stay-green" phenotype is reminiscing about Mendel's classic experiment where he observed a green cotyledon mutant. That protein was identified and known as STAY GREEN (SGR). But the function biology study of SGR was elus

"Gravity" is one of the things we learn from high school physics classes and the tendency of any object towards gravity is known as "Gravitropism". Plants are no exception to that universal rule. The gravitropism of plant root was revealed by Charles Darwin and his son almost 140 years ago and published in the book The Power of Movement in Plants . So far our understanding about root gravitropism is connected to plant hormone auxin, master molecule responsible (or believe) for almost every developmental process. Auxin flows from both shoot to root and root to shoot directions. Asymmetric auxin distribution during root to shoot transport helps plant root to bend towards gravity. This has been well established through auxin transport mutant ( eir1 / pin2 ) phenotype. This protein actually works as an auxin transporter from root to shoot direction. Its mutant doesn't follow gravity at all. We may call it, blind to gravity.  Recently Liangfa Li and Rujin C

Ever wonder everything written "Home Made" gives us the idea that particular food item is fresh. Home Made Pizza to Home Made Juice, what-so-ever. It feels like something is cooked just now and served in front of you with a promise of deliciousness and freshness, as well as.  In science, everything we read in journals are happening at lab. As soon as we get the data or something interesting, we start writing and publish it. I love to read latest research articles, reviews and highlights from my respective field (Plant Biology) regularly. At that time, I feel the same way I was treated with Home Made food. Latest research articles are like "Lab Made Story" to me!  It's Arif Ashraf, a "novice" plant biologist who knows less and keeps writing more, and welcome to my brand new blog series from ARIBIDOPSIS:  "Lab Made Story"!  I'll review recent published articles of plant science in short to get the idea who doesn't ha