Cocaine, nicotine, capsaicin. These are just three familiar examples of the hundreds of thousands of small molecules (also called specialized or secondary metabolites) that plants use as chemical ammunition to protect themselves ...
Biotechnology
Apr 14, 2017
0
227
Even plants have to live on an energy budget. While they're known for converting solar energy into chemical energy in the form of sugars, plants have sophisticated biochemical mechanisms for regulating how they spend that ...
Biotechnology
Mar 17, 2017
0
172
A 60-year-old mystery has been solved by biochemists at The University of Western Australia investigating the origin of a type of digestion-inhibiting proteins thought only to exist in two plant families that contain the ...
Biotechnology
Mar 15, 2017
0
6
Energy is an all-important currency for plants, and scientists from The University of Western Australia have now calculated the cost of one of their biggest expenses. The knowledge could be a key to creating more energy efficient ...
Biotechnology
Feb 8, 2017
0
12
When corn seedlings are nibbled by caterpillars, they defend themselves by releasing scent compounds that attract parasitic wasps whose larvae consume the caterpillar—but not all corn varieties are equally effective at ...
Biotechnology
Oct 25, 2016
0
90
James Umen, Ph.D., associate member at Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, and colleagues have discovered a way to make algae better oil producers without sacrificing growth. The findings were published September 6, in ...
Cell & Microbiology
Oct 19, 2016
1
39
The totality of RNA molecules in an organism at any one time is the product of a delicate dance. Genes must be "turned on," or expressed, in order to turn DNA into RNA and then that RNA into proteins that accomplish an organism's ...
Cell & Microbiology
Oct 13, 2016
0
155
Lignin is a natural component of plant cell walls, the scaffolding that surrounds each cell and plays a pivotal role in plants' ability to grow against gravity and reach heights ranging from stubbly grasses to the sky-scraping ...
Biotechnology
Jun 28, 2016
0
18
Rice is a staple food for more than 3.5 billion people worldwide. Meeting the demand for high-yielding rice is an urgent task for breeders. Superior, high-yielding hybrid plants are often produced by crossing two diverse ...
Biotechnology
Apr 1, 2016
2
174
RNA, once thought to be a mere middleman between DNA and protein, is now recognized as the stage at which a host of regulatory processes can act to allow for flexibility in gene expression and thus the functions of cells ...
Cell & Microbiology
Nov 23, 2015
0
584
