Adding a spoonful of sugar to coffee makes it sweeter, but in plants, researchers have discovered, the addition of sugar molecules to particular proteins plays a surprising variety of roles in basic developmental processes.
A recently published study from two Iowa State University scientists shows that a gene found only in a single plant species can increase protein content when introduced into staple crops.
Plants can't get up and run away when they're being attacked by insects or harsh weather conditions. So they need mechanisms to rapidly respond to a stressful event - being eaten by a bug, for example - and then quickly transition ...
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 ...
Many of the drugs we take today to treat pain, fight cancer or thwart disease were originally identified in plants, some of which are endangered or hard to grow. In many cases, those plants are still the primary source of ...
Local scientists have discovered an ancient protein in modern-day plants that stimulates germination and, if developed, could give farmers more control over seedling growth.
Just as nations around the globe carefully guard their defense secrets, so do plants.
A bacterial signal that when recognized by rice plants enables the plants to resist a devastating blight disease has been identified by a multi-national team of researchers led by scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy ...
The same process plants use to respond to environmental stress acts as an on/off switch for a key enzyme in wood formation, NC State researchers have found.
Overexposure to sunlight, which is damaging to natural photosynthetic systems of green plants and cyanobacteria, is also expected to be damaging to artificial photosynthetic systems. Nature has solved the problem through ...
Nov 20, 2015
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