Roughly half of the western medicines used today were derived from naturally occurring plant metabolites. Plants produce over 200,000 of these specialized metabolites, but identifying medicinally useful ones is challenging, ...
Biochemistry
Jul 2, 2018
0
17
Soil salinity poses a major threat to food security, greatly reducing the yield of agricultural crops. Rising global temperatures are expected to accelerate the buildup of salt in soil, placing an increasing burden on agricultural ...
Biotechnology
Mar 23, 2018
0
22
Nitrogen fertilizers (applied as nitrate, NO3-, or ammonium, NH4+) improve the amount of grain produced per acre, but nitrogen runoff and volatilization pollute the water and the air. Production of nitrogen fertilizers also ...
Ecology
Feb 23, 2018
1
43
Fanconi anemia is a human genetic disorder with severe effects, including an increased risk of cancer and infertility. Work in animal systems has identified many factors involved in Fanconi anemia and showed that these factors ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jan 19, 2018
0
10
Determining how various treatments and conditions affect the mechanical properties of plant cells could allow scientists to understand plant growth at the cellular level and devise ways to enhance it. In a breakthrough report ...
Biotechnology
Nov 20, 2017
0
9
Although the commercialization of transgenic, or "genetically modified", plants has stirred widespread controversy, much research remains focused on improving techniques to create such plants. As people familiar with the ...
Biotechnology
Sep 12, 2016
0
6
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
Black rice has a rich cultural history; called "Forbidden" or "Emperor's" rice, it was reserved for the Emperor in ancient China and used as a tribute food. In the time since, it remained popular in certain regions of China ...
Biotechnology
Sep 25, 2015
0
32
Regions all over the globe are suffering from severe drought, which threatens crop production worldwide. This is especially worrisome given the need to increase, not just maintain, crop yields to feed the increasing global ...
Biotechnology
Jun 11, 2015
0
36
Biofuels are an attractive alternative to fossil fuels, but a key challenge in efforts to develop carbon-neutral, large-scale methods to produce biofuels is finding the right organism for the job. One emerging candidate is ...
Biotechnology
Feb 2, 2015
0
8
