staying alive

In the madness of the UK's Covid response, public health expert Devi Sridhar was a lone voice of reason. Remembering this, I was keen to read her book about the wider application of her thinking to population scale life and death from all causes and found it quite enlightening. Most importantly, she demonstrates how dramatically the political decisions affecting public health differ between countries and how that leads to very different results in avoidable deaths from causes ranging from guns to cars.

How Not to Die (too soon): The Lies We’ve Been Sold and the Policies That Can Save Us
Devi Sridhar
Penguin Viking 2025

My review of the book is now out in the April issue of Chemistry & Industry:

Health accountability

Chemistry & Industry Volume 90, Issue 4, April 2026, Page 34

access via:

Wiley Online Library (paywalled PDF of the whole review section)

SCI (premium content, ie members only)

In the same issue I also have a feature about plant microbiomes. I've covered the field a couple of times in Current Biology (most recently in 2022), but this one is slightly different in emphasis as C&I wanted more about the application side of it than I have previously covered.

Plant probiotics

Chemistry & Industry Volume 90, Issue 4, April 2026, Pages 22-25

access via:

Wiley Online Library (preview of the first page and link to paywalled PDF)

SCI (premium content, ie members only)

plants recycling metals

It has been known for centuries that certain kinds of plants thrive on soils heavily contaminated with toxic metals, even on mining waste. It took a while for people to realise that these plants can be used to extract desirable metals from such soils. Especially in our times with ever-growing hunger for resources like nickel, gold, and rare earth metals, the rising prices of these metals have led to some plant-based mining methods becoming economically attractive.

Read all about it in my latest feature which is out today:

Mining metals with plants

Current Biology Volume 36, Issue 3, 2 February 2026, Pages R73-R75

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(contact me if you would like a PDF)

See also my new Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.

My mastodon posts are also mirrored on Bluesky.

Last year's thread is here .

The yellow zinc violet (Viola lutea ssp. calaminaria) has historically served as an indicator plant for soils rich in zinc ores. It is still found on former mining sites in the area where the borders between the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany meet. (Photo: Gilles San Martin/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).)

arboreal lifestyles

Today's issue of Current Biology includes a special section on the theme of plant interactions (see the cover below). My contribution is a somewhat whimsical appreciation of some of the many ways in which animal lives revolve around trees, from humans to ants, and not forgetting the sloths. The feature is out now:

How life dances around trees

Current Biology Volume 33, Issue 11, 05. June 2023, Pages R455-R458

FREE access to full text and PDF download

See also my Mastodon thread where I highlighted all CB features of 2023.

I'm not on Instagram myself, but I believe if you follow CurrentBiology there, you'll find my features highlighted there as well.

Cover of the special issue, volume 33, number 11. The photo shows old oak branches laden with epiphytes in the coastal region of South Carolina, USA. Image credit: Daniela Duncan/Getty.

all about Allium

a rare excursion into food related botany with this feature sweeping up genome studies of garlic and onion, along with the recent discovery of a new Allium species. All in all, a surprising amount of really challenging science to be found around the plants in the Allium genus, which also includes leek, chives, and lots of ornamental plants.

Read all about garlic et al. in my latest feature:

All about Allium

Current Biology Volume 31, Issue 22, 22 November 2021, Pages R1449-R1452

FREE access to full text and PDF download

Chives, unless they are eaten before they get the chance, produce decorative spherical umbels similar to the larger ones of many ornamental Allium species. (Photo: PublicDomainPictures/Pixabay.)

wonderful Welwitschia

The desert plant Welwitschia mirabilis has accompanied my writing for a while. It featured in my book Exzentriker des Lebens / Life on the Edge. The info in the books is mostly 1990s plant physiology. Now however, researchers have published a high quality genome structure of Welwitschia in comparison with its closest relative - which isn't very close. I've used the opportunity to also have a look at other plant life in deserts on other continents - in the context that the climate disaster will produce more extreme conditions for life to cope with, so we'd better understand how it does.

The resulting feature is out now:

How to survive in the desert

Current Biology Volume 31, Issue 17, 14 September 2021, Pages R1017-R1019

FREE access to full text and PDF download

See also my twitter thread with all 2021 features that are now in the open archives.

Welwitschia_mirabilis, Plate 5369 from vol89 (1863) Curtis's Botanical Magazine (source: wikipedia)

bonus illustration not included in my feature, as images in portrait format are awkward with the column format we use.

a billion-year history

The press releases on which I filter-feed on a daily basis are always a mixed bag. They include the good, the bad and the ugly along with a few hilarious ones, and if a major genomics study involved ten separate organisations, I may well receive ten separate press releases about the same paper.

An example of a good story that caught my attention immediately, with the headline alone, arrived in February from Virginia Tech. The winning headline was:

Researchers investigate a billion years of coexistence between plants and fungi

A billion years is a very long time, even in evolutionary biology, and if you look closer it means that the cooperation between the lineages of plants and fungi is older than the spread of either lineage on dry land. So did they help each other conquer land? Did their cooperation which is still happening in many shapes and sizes today make life on the continents possible? These questions are discussed in my feature, which is out in today's issue of Current Biology:


The success story of plants and fungi

Current Biology Volume 29, issue 6, pages R183-R185, March 18, 2019

FREE access to full text and PDF download



Root samples labelled with a fluorescent dye to determine the fungal colonisation rates and mycorrhizal structures. (Photo: © Ming Wang, MPI for Chemical Ecology.

ancient plants

The list of science-y things I have never covered is shrinking. Still haven't done anything specifically about dinosaurs, but I've now done my first feature on palaeobotany, and I found that really exciting, so may be doing more of the ancient ferns and conifers at some point (I also have a soft spot for the evolutionary history of the ginkgo tree, which I once discussed in a book review).

The story is mostly about late Permian plant fossils found in Jordan, and the wider idea behind it is the question whether the tropics serve as a source of biodiversity for the global biosphere, i.e. as a "cradle" of evolution.

Read all about it:


Finding the cradles of evolution

Current Biology Volume 29, issue 3, pages R71-R73, February 04, 2019

FREE access to full text and PDF download




An almost complete frond of the corystosperm Dicroidum irnense found at the Umm Irna Formation in Jordan and dated to the late Permian. These seed plants were widespread in the Triassic, but became extinct in the Jurassic. (Photo: © Patrick Blomenkemper.)

botanic gardens

We're used to the thought that animal conservation is by and large a losing battle. Animal species are becoming extinct at an alarming rate in this man-made 6th mass extinction. Conservation efforts can save a few and slow the rate a little bit, but there is no chance whatsoever of stopping extinctions altogether.

It hadn't occurred to me that the situation is different for plants. We can preserve their seeds and grow them in botanic gardens, which led the authors of a paper I read recently to the claim that there is no reason any plant should go extinct. Which is to say, we could save every plant known to science if we put our mind to it. This hopeful message inspired me to write a feature about botanic gardens and their role in conservation (it also fills a gap as I have features about zoos and herbaria in my back catalogue already!), which is out now:

Can botanic gardens save all plants?

Current Biology
Volume 28, Issue 18, 24 September 2018, Pages R1075-R1078

FREE access to full text and PDF download





Own photo - some cannabis plants seen at Chelsea Physic Garden

forest family

In contrast to what some reforestation programmes and commercial forestry seem to think, forests aren't just collections of identical trees, they are complex ecosystems with characteristic diversity in plant species as well as in everything else. Big data now enables researchers to analyse that complexity in detail on a global scale and work out how forests successfully spread around the world in relatively short time (less than 1/10 of the age of the Earth) and how humanity is reversing that spread in an even shorter time.

Read all about it in my latest feature, which is out now:


The rise and fall of global forests

Current Biology Volume 28, Issue 6, 19 March 2018, Pages R245–R248


FREE access to full text and PDF download



As I used the ginkgo as an example of a tree that lost its ecological context, this was a good excuse to use one of my own photos - taken at the top end of John Garne Way, Oxford Brookes University.

becoming a plant

Today's issue of Current Biology has a special section called

The making of a plant

with lots of fascinating stuff on everything plant related from cell biology to agriculture.

My contribution is a feature rounding up various ways in which mimicking plants can be useful for us, from architecture through to ecology and behaviour of pollinators:

Reinventing the plant

Current Biology Volume 27, Issue 17, 11 September 2017, Pages R855–R858

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

forest biodiversity

the ongoing deforestation of our planet is a major crisis, but it's not only about the loss of forest area. The biodiversity is important and endangered too, and recent analyses suggest it gets too little attention. Hence my latest feature:

How can we save forest biodiversity?

Current Biology Volume 26, Issue 22, 21 November 2016, Pages R1167–R1170

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

Forests with a rich mixture of species not only look more interesting, they are also more productive and can thus better protect us from climate change. (Image: Deborah Taylor.)

disappearing forests

My latest feature is about deforestation in Eastern Europe - of the legal kind in Poland and of the illegal kind in Romania. Oh, and I also managed to get a mention in for Chernobyl - at least one place in Europe where wildlife is left in peace.

Europe's last wilderness threatened

Current Biology
Volume 26, Issue 14, pR641–R643, 25 July 2016

Open access to full text and PDF download

Białowieża forest,Poland (Photo: Ralf Lotys/Wikipedia.)

drawing life

I always wanted to do something on scientific illustration, so the current exhibition of Maria Sibylla Merian's Suriname insects, and the forthcoming 300th anniversary of her death were a good excuse to give in to that. My feature on biology illustration from Merian to this day is out today:

Putting biology in the picture

Current Biology
Volume 26, Issue 9, pR343–R346, 9 May 2016

FREE access to full text and PDF download

Maria Sibylla Merian, Grape Vine with Gaudy Sphinx Moth, 1702–3, is on display as part of the exhibition Maria Merian’s Butterflies at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace until 9 October. www.royalcollection.org.uk. (Image: Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2016.)

how plants think

Plants don't have a brain, so any claims that they can conduct cognitive processes are bound to be controversial, as they challenge our views of cognition. And yet, over the last few years, evidence has accumulated showing that plants can communicate, remember, count ... This still doesn't mean that they understand when we talk to them, but at least one should keep an open mind to be able to discover cognitive processes that may look very different from the ones in animals but ultimately serve the same functions.

I've rounded up some examples of plant cognition in my latest feature which is out today:

Could plants have cognitive abilities?

Current Biology Volume 26, Issue 5, 7 March 2016, Pages R181–R184 doi:10.1016/j.cub.2016.02.044

FREE access to the full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

The root space of plants is a highly complex and insufficiently understood system described as the rhizosphere. It enables communication both among plants and between plants and other species. (Photo: N. H. Groß)

the trouble with photosynthesis

If you look at plants from a technological point of view, there is a fascinating flaw in photosynthesis which is simply down to the fact that it evolved in an atmosphere with virtually no oxygen, and now it is having problems with its own waste product. Some tropical plants like maize and sugar cane have found a fix, but other crops like rice and wheat are massively inefficient at turning carbon dioxide into food, which is why various research groups are trying to improve them.

Read all about it in my feature:

Fixing photosynthesis
Chemistry & Industry April 2015, pp 42-45
Free access to the full text

In the same issue I also have a "long essay review" of the book Fracking by Hester and Harrison (from the series Issues in environmental science and technology)

Fracking - points of view
Chemistry & Industry April 2015, pp 50-51
limited access

seasonal offerings

My German pieces published in December are embarrassingly seasonal - there is ice and snow aplenty in a feature about the subglacial biosphere of Antarctica, and the target of my regular fun-poking is Poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima), which is known in Germany as Weihnachtsstern (christmas star). That's quite enough xmas for me, I don't want to hear it mentioned again until next year ...

Mikrobielle Artenvielfalt unter dem Eis der Antarktis
Nachrichten aus der Chemie 62, 1186-1187, 2014
[related content in English]

Die Wissenschaft vom Weihnachtsstern
Nachrichten aus der Chemie 62, 1251, 2014

how to feed the world

The world population keeps growing, more people want better diets, and climate change puts food production at risk. All these global trends mean we as a civilisation will have to act now to make sure we will still have enough food in the next few decades.

Plant science can offer crucial support for this quest in a number of ways. Improvements in crop yield through genetic engineering are a controversial route, but even by tracking down wild relatives of crop plants and feeding their desirable traits into the gene pool by conventional breeding, plant scientists can help to improve global food security. Importantly, bridges must be built between fundamental research in plant science and the applied research in agriculture.

These issues are covered in some detail in my latest feature which is out today:

Plant science called up to provide food security

Current Biology
Volume 24, Issue 23, pR1105–R1108, 1 December 2014
Open access

The feature was inspired by this special issue of the American Journal of Botany (October 2014):

phage therapy for trees and people

The use of bacteriophages as antibacterial therapeutics is an option that has been underappreciated for too long, considering the current crisis of widespread resistance to antibiotics. As I've reported three years ago, much of the ecological research into the triangular relationship between a pathogenic bacterium, its host and its phage has been carried out with plants such as the horse chestnut. This has now reached the point where experimental treatments for plant diseases can be introduced based on phage cocktails. These can also serve as models to study the promise and pitfalls of future use of phages to treat infectious diseases in humans.

My feature is out in Current Biology today:

Phage therapies for plants and people

Current Biology Volume 24, Issue 12, 16 June 2014, Pages R541–R544

Summary and restricted access to full text / pdf download

NB there has been a change of access policy so the features will no longer be on open access in the first two weeks after publication date. They will, however, become freely accessible one year after publication. If you have problems accessing a feature, please do drop me an email (michaelgrr aatt yahoo ddott co ddott uk) - I have pdf files at hand which I'll be happy to send for personal use.

A horse chestnut sapling, own photo.

moving targets

Are plant diseases that cause catastrophic famines a thing of the past? Well, ahem, the pests and pathogens keep evolving, moving and spreading, and human activities like global trade and large scale monoculture often help them. So new threats to food security are emerging, and scientists have to find new ways of saving the crops we eat.

Some very scary things I learned from researching this feature which is now out:

Pests on the move

Current Biology, Volume 23, Issue 19, R855-R857, 7 October 2013, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2013.09.034

Free access to full text and PDF file

Stem rust on wheat stalks. (Photo: Liang Qu/IAEA.)

how cereals tricked us

In my latest feature, out today, I looked at the origins of agriculture. People like to think that it was an invention in the sense that neolithic hunter-gatherers "invented" farming and found it more efficient so switched from food-finding to food production.

However, recent research has shown up a massive paradox in this narrative. For the people concerned, farming wasn't a better way to make a living than foraging. If anything, they had to work harder for less reward. Also, the feat of "domestication" wasn't a clever trick devised by early plant breeders. Rather, people harvested the grains they liked and took them home, and unwittingly exerted selection pressure that changed the species they ate.

When birds spread plant seeds by eating berries, we tend to credit the plant for recruiting the animals as helpers in their own reproduction. After writing this feature I arrived at the conclusion that the origin of agriculture was very similar. Barley tricked humans into spreading its seeds around the world.

Anyhow. Full story here:

The paradoxical evolution of agriculture

Current Biology, Volume 23, Issue 16, R667-R670, 19 August 2013 doi:10.1016/j.cub.2013.08.001

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Image source: Wikimedia commons