Making crops colorful for easier weeding by robots

To make weeding easier, scientists suggest bioengineering crops to be colorful or to have differently shaped leaves so that they can be more easily distinguished from their wild and weedy counterparts. This could involve ...

How sunflowers 'see' the sun: Study describes a novel mechanism

Sunflowers famously turn their faces to follow the sun as it crosses the sky. But how do sunflowers "see" the sun to follow it? New work from plant biologists at the University of California, Davis, published Oct. 31 in PLOS ...

Understanding how chemical communication evolved in insects

All around us, insects are speaking to each other: jockeying for mates, searching for food, and trying to avoid becoming someone else's next meal. Some of this communication is easy to spot—like the flashes of fireflies ...

Researchers reveal novel module that influences soybean seed traits

Soybean (Glycine max) is an important economic crop, providing 28.7% of the world's vegetable oil and 70.7% of its protein meal. Seed weight is usually associated with seed size and is one of the most important agronomic ...

Scientists reengineer cancer drugs to be more versatile

Rice University scientists have enlisted widely used cancer therapy systems to control gene expression in mammalian cells, a feat of synthetic biology that could change how diseases are treated.

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