A common registration-to-publication automated pipeline for nomenclatural acts for higher plants (International Plant Names Index, IPNI), fungi (Index Fungorum, MycoBank) and animals (ZooBank).

Collaborative effort among four lead indexes of taxon names and nomenclatural acts (International Plant Name Index (IPNI), Index Fungorum, MycoBank and ZooBank) and the journals PhytoKeys, MycoKeys and ZooKeys to create an automated, pre-publication, registration workflow, based on a server-to-server, XML request/response model. The registration model for ZooBank uses the TaxPub schema, which is an extension to the Journal Tag Publishing Suite (JATS) of the National Library of Medicine (NLM). The indexing or registration model of IPNI and Index Fungorum will use the Taxonomic Concept Transfer Schema (TCS) as a basic standard for the workflow. Other journals and publishers who intend to implement automated, pre-publication, registration of taxon names and nomenclatural acts can also use the open sample XML formats and links to schemas and relevant information published in the paper.

Structural and Functional Insights into the Cryoprotection of Membranes by the Intrinsically Disordered Dehydrins.

Dehydration can be due to desiccation caused by a lack of environmental water or to freezing caused by a lack of liquid water. Plants have evolved a large family of proteins called LEA (late embryogenesis abundant) proteins, which include the intrinsically disordered dehydrin (dehydration protein) family, to combat these abiotic stresses. Although transcription and translation studies have shown a correlation between dehydration stress and the presence of dehydrins, the biochemical mechanisms have remained somewhat elusive. We examine here the effect and structure of a small model dehydrin (Vitis riparia K2) on the protection of membranes from freeze-thaw stress. This protein is able to bind to liposomes containing phosphatidic acid and protect the liposomes from fusing after freeze-thaw treatment. The presence of K2 did not measurably affect liposome surface accessibility or lipid mobility but did lower its membrane transition temperature by 3 °C. Using sodium dodecyl sulfate as a membrane model, we examined the NMR structure of K2 in the presence and absence of the micelle. Biochemical and NMR experiments show that the conserved, lysine-rich segments are involved in the binding of the dehydrin to a membrane, whereas the poorly conserved φ segments play no role in binding or protection.

Author inflation masks global capacity for species discovery in flowering plants.

Species discovery is a fundamental first step for all of biodiversity science. Recent research has claimed that the increasing number of authors associated with the description of new species represents an expanding workforce discovering the remaining new species from an ever-diminishing pool. Here, we present a comprehensive dataset from The International Plant Names Index (IPNI) of new species of flowering plant published between 1970 and 2011. We show that, on average, 1855 new species have been described annually since 1970. We show that compared to other scientific disciplines the increased number of authors on taxonomic papers is relatively small and may reflect changes in scientific practice rather than an increase in taxonomic capacity. These data, alongside published results demonstrating a lag period of 35 yr between a specimen being collected and published as a new species, strongly suggest that the global taxonomic capacity to describe new species of flowering plant is stagnant at a time of unprecedented concern for conservation and extinction.