In the battle between diseases and plants—constant, changing and centuries old—scientists and farmers usually arm themselves through classical breeding, crossing varieties in the hopes of eventually reaching disease resistance. ...
Biotechnology
Aug 16, 2013
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Many fungi can make themselves invisible to the immune system of plants. Scientists from Wageningen University have discovered that the tomato fungus Cladosporium manages this by enclosing chunks of chitin originating from ...
Biotechnology
Jul 3, 2013
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Plants can't swat a bug or run away from one, but that doesn't mean that plants can't fight back. Plants have evolved unique and sophisticated immune systems to defend themselves against insects and pathogens. Plant hormones ...
Biotechnology
May 23, 2013
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When a pathogen attacks a plant, infection usually follows after the plant's immune system is compromised. A team of researchers at the University of California, Riverside focused on Phytophthora, the pathogen that triggered ...
Biotechnology
Feb 6, 2013
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(Phys.org)—Soil-dwelling bacteria that depend on wheat and barley roots for their "room and board" could soon prove themselves helpful to the plants in return. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists in Pullman, ...
Ecology
Jan 10, 2013
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A new high-throughput screening technique developed by researchers at the RIKEN Plant Science Center (PSC) has been used to uncover five novel immune-priming compounds in Arabidopsis plants. Discovery of the compounds, which ...
Biotechnology
Sep 11, 2012
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Many plants produce compounds that serve as a defense against predators or pathogens. Some are also used by humans for a variety of beneficial purposes, such as in medicines. As recently as the early 1990s, a unique class ...
Cell & Microbiology
Dec 12, 2011
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Powdery mildew is a tricky pathogen: The fungus can manipulate barley in a way that it is not only granted entry into the plant, but also gets the plant's cells to supply it with nutrients. A team of researchers at Technische ...
Biotechnology
Jul 12, 2011
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Just like plants and animals, bacteria have a range of defence mechanisms against viruses and other threats. Dutch researchers at the Wageningen Laboratory for Microbiology and their American and Russian colleagues have largely ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jun 24, 2011
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The so-called immune receptor Rx, conferring the resistance of some potato cultivars against potato virus X, does recognise the viruses in the cytoplasm, but – unexpectedly – its presence in the nucleus is also ...
Plants & Animals
Jan 4, 2011
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