Alpine plant spins its own flavonoid wool

Like the movie version of Spider-Man who shoots spider webs from holes in his wrists, a little alpine plant has been found to eject cobweb-like threads from tiny holes in specialized cells on its leaves. It's these tiny holes ...

What makes plant cell walls both strong and extensible?

A plant cell wall's unique ability to expand without weakening or breaking—a quality required for plant growth—is due to the movement of its cellulose skeleton, according to new research that models the cell wall. The ...

How plants find their symbiotic partners

What would it be like to produce fertilizer in your own basement? Leguminous plants, like peas, beans and various species of clover, obtain the organic nitrogen they need for their growth from symbiotic soil bacteria via ...

How pathogenic bacteria weather the slings and arrows of infection

Infectious diseases are a leading cause of global mortality. During an infection, bacteria experience many different stresses—some from the host itself, some from co-colonizing microbes and others from therapies employed ...

Cancer cells 'remove blindfold' to spread

Cancer cells spread by switching on and off abilities to sense their surroundings, move, hide and grow new tumors, a new study has found.

Entropy production gets a system update

Nature is not homogenous. Most of the universe is complex and composed of various subsystems—self-contained systems within a larger whole. Microscopic cells and their surroundings, for example, can be divided into many ...

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