Ethanol helps plants better tolerate heat stress

A dose of ethanol, better known as common alcohol, can enable plants to withstand heat stress that might otherwise kill them, RIKEN biologists have found. This could offer a low-cost way to make crops more resilient to the ...

Elegant constrictions in a cellular kill switch

The inner workings of a "self-destruct switch" present on human cells that can be activated during an immune response have been revealed. In unprecedented detail, KAUST scientists with collaborators in China report the 3D ...

Could contaminated land actually be good for trees?

The very act of tolerating some forms of soil pollution may give trees an advantage in the natural world, says University of Montreal plant biologists. Their findings were published this week in BMC Plant Biology.

Increasing crop resistance to pathogens

We all know that animals have an immune system - but plants have systems to fight infection too. Plant cells have receptor proteins which bind with parts of a pathogen. These receptor proteins are located on the surface of ...

A protein that can mean life or death for cells

Each cell in an organism has a sensor that measures the health of its "internal" environment. This "alarm" is found in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), which is able to sense cellular stress and trigger either rescue responses ...

Drought response identified in potential biofuel plant

Drought resistance is the key to large-scale production of Jatropha, a potential biofuel plant—and an international group of scientists has identified the first step toward engineering a hardier variety.

page 7 from 9