How plants make cocaine

Cocaine is one of the most commonly used (and abused) drugs, but we have almost no modern information on how plants produce this complex alkaloid. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, ...

Are animal traits the result of behavioral epigenetics?

A plant that is unremarkable in one environment becomes an invasive species in another, pushing through house foundations and sprouting up through roads. A house sparrow that's a perfectly charming resident of the English ...

With fungi on their side, rice plants grow to be big

By tinkering with a type of fungus that lives in association with plant roots, researchers have found a way to increase the growth of rice by an impressive margin. The so-called mycorrhizal fungi are found in association ...

Fish become bolder and more gluttonous from drug residue

Anxiety-moderating drugs that reach waterways via wastewater create fearless and asocial fish that eat more quickly than normal. These behavioral changes can have serious ecological consequences. This is shown by Umeå University ...

Calculating the costs of multiple switchgrass gene copies

A collaborative team led by researchers at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology (HudsonAlpha), and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI), a DOE Office ...

Darwin's mystery explained

The appearance of many species of flowering plants on Earth, and especially their relatively rapid dissemination during the Cretaceous (approximately 100 million years ago) can be attributed to their capacity to transform ...

Hungary toxic sludge spill reaches Danube (Update)

The company at the centre of Hungary's toxic sludge leak that killed four people defended itself Friday, as fears increased over the threat to marine life in Europe's second longest river.

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