Femke de Jong

The sensing of salt

The sensing of salt How plants sense salt has at last been deciphered by the group of Zhen-Ming Pei. For their last publication in Nature they went on the hunt for mutants that did not show salt induced Ca2+ spikes. This resulted in the identification of a mutant they named moca1 for monocation-induced [Ca2+]i increasesContinue reading “The sensing of salt”

Great talk about Cross-kingdom RNAi by Hailing Jin

Great talk about Cross-kingdom RNAi by Hailing Jin Last week we were treated by a fantastic seminar from Hailing Jin from the University of California. In the over-airconditioned seminar room we quickly forgot about the cold while she introduced us in the world of cross-kingdom RNAi and small RNA trafficking between plants and fungal pathogens.Continue reading “Great talk about Cross-kingdom RNAi by Hailing Jin”

A case of plant blindness

A case of plant blindness Most scientist working on plants would have noticed at some time that plants are ignored by a lot of other life science researchers. Sometimes it will be during a talk whereby the presenter say something along the line ‘in all eukaryotes we have gene family X’ while you know geneContinue reading “A case of plant blindness”

Plants and salt stress

Plants and salt stress The research project that I am doing at the moment is focussing on identifying lipid protein interactions under abiotic stress conditions like salt and heat stress. Hence I am reading about salt stress to get an idea about how my study fits in the bigger picture that we have about howContinue reading “Plants and salt stress”