Congratulations!

Some of the 2008 Master of Biotechnology students celebrating after the mid-year graduation ceremony.  This was the largest graduating class to date (9 graduates), but more to come with 15 students currently enrolled in the first year of the program and 6 second year students beginning their Honours year.

The Plant Cell, December 2007

Systemic Acquired acclimation to High Light

Nancy A. Eckardt
News and Reviews Editor
neckardt@aspb.org  

IN BRIEF. Different parts of the canopy are exposed to potentially damaging full sunlight as the sun tracks from east to west. Rossel et al. (pages 4091–4110) investigate a novel photoprotective signaling system in Arabidopsis by which exposed leaves could signal to and thereby preacclimate shaded leaves, which is known as systemic acquired acclimation (SAA). They show that a systemic signal is rapidly transmitted from high-lighted exposed to distal shaded leaves, resulting in very similar changes in global gene expression. This work shows that SAA involves a novel signal or combination of signals that can preacclimate photosynthetic tissues to high light.