Influence of soil depth, irrigation, and plant genotype on the soil microbiome, metaphenome, and carbon chemistry.

IMPORTANCE: Carbon is cycled through the air, plants, and belowground environment. Understanding soil carbon cycling in deep soil profiles will be important to mitigate climate change. Soil carbon cycling is impacted by water, plants, and soil microorganisms, in addition to soil mineralogy. Measuring biotic and abiotic soil properties provides a perspective of how soil microorganisms interact with the surrounding chemical environment. This study emphasizes the importance of considering biotic interactions with inorganic and oxidizable soil carbon in addition to total organic carbon in carbonate-containing soils for better informing soil carbon management decisions.

Engagement with the North Wales Local Dental Committee - part 1: current participation and opinions of its communication methods.

Aims To gather the views of North Wales dentists on the current communication methods of the North Wales Local Dental Committee (LDC) (NWLDC) and how this could be optimised to improve engagement from members.Design Descriptive cross-sectional survey.Setting Online electronic questionnaire.Materials and methods Survey circulated via the NWLDC's current communication channels, local professional groups, the local health board and Health Education and Improvement Wales' Maxcourse distribution list.Results A total of 167 unique responses were received from across North Wales. In total, 79.1% were from dentists, of which most were working in the general dental services (63.6%) on a mixed practice basis (61.9%). Furthermore, 69.5% of respondents felt they received too little information from the LDC, 71.3% never attended LDC meetings and only 15.6% attended more than one meeting a year. The pandemic has had no impact for 82.6% in increasing their engagement with the LDC.Conclusions Communication between the LDC and the dental community within an area is crucial. This survey has shown that, despite the best of intentions, the current communication methods utilised by the NWLDC are not effective at maximising the inclusiveness and participation with the LDC. The survey revealed that there is a lack of clarity over the LDC's role and who is 'allowed' to attend LDC meetings. It showed that although the dental practitioners practising within North Wales want to receive information and updates from the NWLDC, the communication methods which are currently being used are not reaching the majority of them.

Engagement with the North Wales Local Dental Committee - part 2: communication preferences.

Aims To gather the views of dentists practising within North Wales on their preferences as to how they would prefer to interact with the North Wales Local Dental Committee (LDC) (NWLDC).Design Descriptive cross-sectional survey.Setting Online electronic questionnaire.Materials and methods Survey circulated via the NWLDC's current communication channels, local professional groups, the local health board and Health Education and Improvement Wales' MaxCourse email distribution.Results A total of 167 unique responses were received from across North Wales, which included 132 responses from primary care dentists, yielding a response rate of 40.6%. Respondents would prefer to interact with the NWLDC via email notifications (88%), virtual meetings (52.1%) and via the LDC website (41.9%). Furthermore, 31.1% wanted a combination of both physical and virtual attendance at an LDC meeting to be an option and 43.7% of respondents did not want to attend LDC meetings as a preferred method of engaging with the LDC. The survey indicated that holding an educational event just before the LDC meeting will not have a positive impact on subsequent participation in the LDC meeting for 91.6% of respondents. The survey revealed that 70% had never visited the NWLDC's website, with only 20.4% of people visiting it more than once a year. Also, 83.8% stated that the pandemic had made no difference on them accessing the NWLDC website. The results allowed the identification of the top five 'core elements' for an ideal LDC website and which elements should have their access restricted only to LDC members.Conclusions The survey revealed that the respondents want greater communication from the NWLDC and that this is best achieved over a variety of different communication platforms, using the NWLDC website as a primary information resource to which the other communication methods are tethered. It is recognised that only a minority will want to, or be able to, attend the quarterly LDC meetings and so it is imperative that the NWLDC's communication strategy accommodates these individuals, both proactively and passively, by effective use of digital media and to continuously monitor its effectiveness so that it can adapt its strategy to maximise engagement and information delivery. There is a need to expand the representation of the LDC committee to encompass those who have newly entered the profession or are new to the area. The NWLDC recognises the need to reach out to dentists across North Wales who many feel isolated and disenfranchised to establish a constructive, mutually beneficial relationship.

A modern ampelography: a genetic basis for leaf shape and venation patterning in grape.

Terroir, the unique interaction between genotype, environment, and culture, is highly refined in domesticated grape (Vitis vinifera). Toward cultivating terroir, the science of ampelography tried to distinguish thousands of grape cultivars without the aid of genetics. This led to sophisticated phenotypic analyses of natural variation in grape leaves, which within a palmate-lobed framework exhibit diverse patterns of blade outgrowth, hirsuteness, and venation patterning. Here, we provide a morphometric analysis of more than 1,200 grape accessions. Elliptical Fourier descriptors provide a global analysis of leaf outlines and lobe positioning, while a Procrustes analysis quantitatively describes venation patterning. Correlation with previous ampelography suggests an important genetic component, which we confirm with estimates of heritability. We further use RNA-Seq of mutant varieties and perform a genome-wide association study to explore the genetic basis of leaf shape. Meta-analysis reveals a relationship between leaf morphology and hirsuteness, traits known to correlate with climate in the fossil record and extant species. Together, our data demonstrate a genetic basis for the intricate diversity present in grape leaves. We discuss the possibility of using grape leaves as a breeding target to preserve terroir in the face of anticipated climate change, a major problem facing viticulture.

Conflict between Intrinsic Leaf Asymmetry and Phyllotaxis in the Resupinate Leaves of Alstroemeria psittacina.

Spiral phyllotactic patterning is the result of intricate auxin transport relationships in the shoot apical meristem (SAM) that act to place auxin maxima at the future sites of leaf initiation. Inherent to this process is a bias in auxin distribution in leaf primordia, such that increased auxin is found on the descending side of the leaf (toward the older neighbor) compared to the ascending side (toward the younger neighbor), creating phyllotactically dependent leaf asymmetry. Separate from phyllotactic-dependent asymmetry is handedness in plants - that is, genetically encoded, fixed chirality, such as the twining of certain vines and the torsions induced by microtubule mutations. Here, we perform a morphometric analysis on the resupinate leaves of Alstroemeria psittacina. Interestingly, the twist in leaves always occurs in a single direction, regardless of the phyllotactic direction of the plant. Because of the resupination, leaves in this species possess an inherent handedness. However, this asymmetry is modulated in a phyllotactic-dependent manner, consistent with the known developmental constraints of phyllotaxis upon leaf morphology. This creates the interesting circumstance in A. psittacina that leaves arising from plants with a counter-clockwise phyllotactic direction are (1) more asymmetric, (2) larger, and (3) possess symmetrical shape differences relative to leaves from plants with clockwise phyllotaxis. The mechanism underlying these differences likely involves a developmental delay in clockwise leaves caused by the conflict between the phyllotaxis-dependent asymmetry and asymmetry resulting from resupination. The evolutionary implications of a dimorphic population without a genetic basis for selection to act upon are discussed.