Understanding cooperation and conflict in plant symbionts

The traditional idea of symbiosis—long-term interactions between two organisms—is that the participants mutually benefit each other. However, researchers have debated whether the interests of the symbionts always line ...

Researchers reveal how parasitic plants evolved

Parasitic plants are extraordinary plants with unique physiology, ecology, and evolutionary histories, and little is known about their origin and evolution. Initially, certain autotrophs evolved to be facultative hemiparasitic ...

The missing links: Finding function in lincRNAs

Genomes contain regions between protein-coding genes that produce lengthy RNA molecules that never give rise to a protein. These long intergenic non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs) are thought to have important functions, such as ...

Viewing a microcosm through a physics lens

"What can physics offer biology?" This was how Alison Patteson, assistant professor in the College of Arts and Sciences' physics department and also a faculty member in the BioInspired Institute, began the explanation of ...

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 ...

For plant geneticists, some genes are double the trouble

When plant geneticists find a gene that improves crop yields, they want to try to insert that same change into other crops. But Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor and HHMI Investigator Zachary Lippman cautions that ...

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