From aflatoxin to sake: A case of microbe domestication

What do beer, dogs and cats, and corn all have in common? All of them are the end products of the process of domestication. Almost everybody knows that a number of different animals and plants have been bred for qualities ...

Genetic markers for tracking species

At the supermarket checkout, hardly anybody enters prices manually anymore. Using scanners that can read the barcodes is much faster. Biologists now want to use a similar procedure for identifying domestic animal and plant ...

Pod corn develops leaves in the inflorescences

In a variant of maize known as pod corn, or tunicate maize, the maize kernels on the cob are not 'naked' but covered by long membranous husks known as glumes. According to scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Plant ...

Swiss parliament approves nuclear plant phase out

The Swiss parliament's upper house on Wednesday approved plans to phase out the country's nuclear plants over the next two decades in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan.

Jumping gene enabled key step in corn domestication

Corn split off from its closest relative teosinte, a wild Mexican grass, about 10,000 years ago thanks to the breeding efforts of early Mexican farmers. Today it's hard to tell that the two plants were ever close kin: Corn ...

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