Spring 2024: Division of Botany

Message from the DOB Leadership

Ulrike Muller, Chair (chair.dob@sicb.org); Cody Howard, Chair-Elect (chairelect.dob@sicb.org); Morgan Furze, Program Officer (dpo.dob@sicb.org); Brian MacNeill, Student-Postdoc Representative (bnmacneill@crimson.ua.edu)

We hope everyone had a productive meeting in Seattle and learned a lot. If you want to review the minutes from the divisional member’s meeting you can find them here. As part of the larger SICB strategic planning process, we will be working on a DOB strategic plan. We will be contacting you in early June to get your ideas for DOB. 

Divisional Bylaws Amendments

Flower of Agave scabra.
Flower of Agave scabra. Photo credit: Eduardo Ruiz-Sanchez
Bee in a flower
Bee in a flower. Photo by Jenna Miladin

Finding members to serve in leadership positions is often difficult for small and new divisions. We are updating our bylaws to make changes to the election schedule and also the ‘elect’ positions. Please review the bylaws changes here. You can vote using this link. Elections will be open until June 20, 2024. 

If you are willing to volunteer for DOB, please reach out at any time to the leadership. We have positions to fill and volunteers are appreciated. 

 

Best Student Presentations

Photo of Madison Hales
Madison Hales, winner of the DOB Best Student Presentation.

At the 2024 annual meeting in Seattle, Madison Hale won the DOB Best Student Talk award. Her talk was titled: Control Theory Analysis of Rice Root Response to Frequency-dependent Environmental Stimuli. Madison is a graduate student at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Please read Madison’s 2024 SICB abstract to learn more about her work: 

Control theory has been important for understanding the algorithms underlying biological stimulus responses and providing hypotheses for mechanistic implementations of these feedback algorithms in diverse animals. Plants respond to environmental stimuli via physical sensing (statoliths), chemical signaling (auxin release) and differential cell elongation. From these processes emerge tropisms activated by stimuli including light (phototropism), touch (thigmotropism), and gravity (gravitropism). Tropisms play key roles in roots’ ability to navigate soil heterogeneities during elongation and penetration, but quantitative mechanistic links between sensing and behavior remain unclear. To elucidate mechanisms and algorithms underlying tropisms during root growth, we employ the “system identification” framework (using periodic forcing to probe how systems follow a particular control target) to study how rice roots (O. sativa) generate corrective gravitropic feedback during growth. We developed our plant System-ID apparatus to image roots growing in a transparent gel while subjected to periodic gravitational stimuli via sinusoidal container oscillation. At all stimulus frequencies (corresponding to periods from 2 to 20 hrs) root tip growth angles (relative to the vertical) oscillated at the stimulus frequency. However, as frequency increased, the magnitude of root oscillation decreased by half and the lag in time between forcing and response also increased to nearly 90 degrees out of phase. Such behavior is reminiscent of animal control systems and indicates an approximately linear control model captures the dynamics involved in rice root gravitropism.

2025 Meeting in Atlanta

Small white flower.
Photo by Jenna Miladin

The 2025 meeting will be the fifth anniversary of the Division of Botany. Please think ahead and invite your colleagues, especially those in the Southeast, since it might be easy for them to travel to Atlanta for the annual meeting. 

DOB is also going to be well represented in the Annual Meeting Symposia for 2025. Symposia of DOB interest include:

  • Cities as a natural experiment: how organisms are finding different solutions to the same urban problems
  • Fleshing it out: recent advances in form, function and motor control of biological hydrostats
  • Integrative Organismal Biology at HBCUs: Highlighting the effectiveness of HBCUs in training the next generation of organismal biologists
  • From Evolution to innovation: Bridging biology and engineering through bioinspired design
  • Identifying the physiological mechanisms that underlie phenotypic responses to rapid environmental change
  • Pollinator-plant interactions in a changing landscape: embracing integrative approaches across scales
  • Organismal systems biology
  • Energetics, sexual selection and ecological innovation