Date: 11th March 2020
Time: 13:15
Title: Plant UV-B sensing; is it all about UV?
Location: Seminar room 1015, Biocentre 2, Viikinkaari 5
Hosts: Matt Robson & Pedro Aphalo
Abstract: Awareness that stratospheric ozone concentrations were decreasing as a result of human activities, triggered a substantial research effort in the 1980’s, aimed at understanding the impacts of ambient (and enhanced) UV-B radiation doses on microorganisms, algae, plants, animals, and human health. These early UV studies indicated severe, damaging impacts of UV-B (280-315nm) radiation on plants. However, more recent studies have contradicted many of those early findings and emphasise that UV-radiation is predominantly an environmental regulator that modulates plant growth and developmental processes via a dedicated UV photoreceptor. UV-mediated damage is now considered a relatively rare event in plants that are grown under otherwise favourable conditions. However, UV-B radiation is still an important player in plant stress biology as this type of radiation has been hypothesised to either diminish or aggravate the stress effects caused by exposure to other stressors. In the talk, I will focus on the importance of dose-response curves and the interactive effects of UV and drought. These interactive effects are directly of environmental relevance as seasonal droughts are commonly associated with, or trail, periods of sunny weather and thus exposure to high UV radiation.
Research in the Jansen group focusses on two distinct research areas, (1) Lemnaceae biology and (2) plant UV-biology. In the seminar I will give a very short introduction about Lemnaceae, toxicology and phytoremediation, before zooming in on plant UV-responses. https://newtrients.ucc.ie/; https://ecotoxicology.ucc.ie/