An open-source RNA analysis platform has been successfully used on plant cells for the first time—a breakthrough that could herald a new era of fundamental research and bolster efforts to engineer more efficient food and ...
Biotechnology
May 16, 2019
2
415
Plant cell walls, as repositories of fixed carbon, are an important source of biomass, which is mainly composed of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. However, the complex lignin structure makes it a rather inefficient ...
Biotechnology
Apr 22, 2019
0
6
Scientists studying plant cell walls—structural supports that help plants overcome the downward pull of gravity—have discovered mechanistic details of a protein involved in the assembly of lignin, a key cell-wall component. ...
Biotechnology
Apr 8, 2019
0
72
With a few genetic tweaks, a type of soil bacteria with an appetite for hydrocarbons shows promise as a biological factory for converting a renewable—but frustratingly untapped—bounty into a replacement for ubiquitous ...
Materials Science
Mar 7, 2019
0
174
Ultimately, researchers want to engineer bioenergy crops to accumulate large amounts of easy-to-use sugars. Researchers from the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center identified a major part of the sugar production process ...
Biotechnology
Jan 10, 2019
0
5
University of Adelaide researchers have discovered a new complex carbohydrate in barley. The first of its kind to be discovered in over 30 years, the cereal polysaccharide has potential applications in food, medicine and ...
Plants & Animals
Jan 8, 2019
0
165
In the search for sustainable materials, the day-to-day structures of plants could help replace polluting materials and plastics with ones that are less detrimental to our environment.
Plants & Animals
Oct 2, 2018
0
25
Dyes are widely used in industries such as textiles, cosmetics, food processing, papermaking and plastics. Globally, we produce about 700,000 metric tons—the weight of two Empire State Buildings—of dye each year to color ...
Materials Science
Aug 1, 2018
0
19
A plant's defense systems are cooperative—when one system fails, another one can take over, at least in part. Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology 's (NTNU) Department of Biology have been collaborating ...
Biotechnology
Jul 26, 2018
0
68
For decades, biologists have believed a key enzyme in plants had one function—produce amino acids, which are vital to plant survival and also essential to human diets.
Biotechnology
Jun 15, 2018
5
31
