Loss of a microRNA molecule boosts rice production

The wild rice consumed by our Neolithic ancestors was very different from the domesticated rice eaten today. Although it is unclear when humans first started farming rice, the oldest paddy fields—in the lower Yangzi River ...

Are animal traits the result of behavioral epigenetics?

A plant that is unremarkable in one environment becomes an invasive species in another, pushing through house foundations and sprouting up through roads. A house sparrow that's a perfectly charming resident of the English ...

Parasitic plants use stolen genes to make them better parasites

Some parasitic plants steal genetic material from their host plants and use the stolen genes to more effectively siphon off the host's nutrients. A new study led by researchers at Penn State and Virginia Tech reveals that ...

Biologists show how plants turn off genes they don't need

A plant has one genome, a specific sequence of millions of basepairs of nucleotides. Yet how this genome is expressed can vary from cell to cell, and it can change as a plant goes through various life stages, from germination ...

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