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SSRL User Meeting

A smiling man dressed in a colorful shirt enthusiastically gestures at a powerpoint slide stating "A single hectare of seagrass beds can support 80,000 fish and 100 million small invertebrates."

Roger was fortunate to be an invited speaker at the 2025 SSRL/LCLS User Meeting held at SSRL in Menlo Park, CA, Sep 21-26. In his talk (above), he presented exciting micro-X-Ray Fluorescence maps of different sulfur species in cryosectioned eelgrass roots and rhizomes. The results point to at least two different defense mechanisms that these enigmatic plants use to counteract the nighttime threat of a potent phytotoxin, hydrogen sulfide. Roger and coauthor Jocelyn Richardson are writing up their preliminary study for submission to New Phytologist. Next steps are likely to include studies of seagrasses grown in controlled laboratory settings, to isolate different pathways of sulfur transformations in the organisms.

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