New research shows, in a world first, a recreation of the evolution of flowering plants through time – a complete angiosperm ‘time-tree’.
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A new study has analyzed one environment-sensitive genic male sterile (EGMS) line that exhibited fertility transition under specified environmental conditions.
After several years of experimentation, scientists have engineered thale cress, or Arabidopsis thaliana, to behave like a succulent, improving water-use efficiency, salinity tolerance and reducing the effects of drought. The tissue succulence engineering method devised for this small flowering plant can be used in other plants to improve drought and salinity tolerance with the goal of moving this approach into food and bioenergy crops.
Many small regulatory elements, including miRNAs, miRNA binding sites, and cis-acting elements, comprise only 5~24 nucleotides and play important roles in regulating gene expression, transcription and translation, and protein structure, and thus are promising targets for gene function studies and crop improvement.
Scientists have helped find a way to control different plant processes – such as when they grow – using nothing but coloured light.
A research team’s model to explain photosynthesis lays out the next challenging phase of research on how green plants transform light energy into chemical energy
Alpine regions on the Tibetan Plateau are sensitive to climate change, however, little is known about their long-term hydroclimate variability due to short instrumental records. A research team established a 537-year standard shrub-ring chronology by cross-dating living and dead Wilson juniper shrubs sampled nearby the Nam Co Lake, on the south-central Tibetan Plateau.
When cells don’t divide into proper copies of themselves, living things fail to grow as they should. For the first time, scientists now understand how a protein called TANGLED1 can lead to accurate cell division in plants.
Researchers have shed light on the reproductive role of ‘dark matter’ DNA – non-coding DNA sequences that previously seemed to have no function.
Wheat, in its own right, is one of the most important foods in the world. It is a staple food for more than 2.5 billion people, it provides 20% of the protein consumed worldwide and, according to the FAO, supplies more calories than any other grain. Its long-term productivity, however, is threatened by rising temperatures, among other factors. Stress from heat, an increasing trend due to climate change, affects its performance, a fact that needs urgent solutions bearing in mind that, according to some estimates, the world’s population will reach 9 billion by the year 2050.
