Sneeze The pollen from some plants can cause allergic rhinitis, a.k.a., “hay fever” in many people. This is because, when the pollen is inhaled into the nasal passages, antigens on the surface of the pollen elicit an immune response in people with a sensitized immune system. (In grass pollen, the allergens may be so-called “expansins”, [...]
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Can You Break The Law By Planting Seeds? If you are in the USA, the answer is YES (at least for the time being). Yes, that is, if your seeds contain genes patented by Monsanto, for example. Yes, even though the patented genes may have ‘contaminated” your organically-grown crops via pollen, seeds, or both, that [...]
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na.ked [nay-kid] adj.- “exposed to view or plainly revealed“ Good Times For Tomato Science The tomato (a.k.a., Solanum lycopersicum). What are the chemicals that make most homegrown tomatoes taste so good? What is the genome sequence of the domesticated tomato? And how is it related to wild relatives, and even to potatoes? These interesting and [...]
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New Meanings For “Medicinal Plants”? Plants have been used by humans for thousands of years as a source of medicines, some effective, many not so much (except perhaps as placebos). The first botanists were likely shaman herbalists who possessed the knowledge of which plants would kill and which plants would cure. Contemporary shamans can now [...]
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The Players Because the genetic story of how plants flower turns out to involve many cellular “players”, as well as an intricate plot, perhaps it would be a good idea to first introduce the main “cast of characters”. Let’s start with florigen. As previously described, this is the so-called flowering hormone that can trigger the [...]
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We’ve seen that some plant species flower “autonomously” , that is, with little or no regard to environmental signals. However, most of what is known about how plants make flowers comes from research on plants that do rely on environmental guidance for flower initiation. It’s Time To Flower The correct timing of flowering is essential [...]
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Last time we had a taste of HOW plants tell time. But what, if any, are the adaptive advantages to plants for doing so? It has long been presumed that the ability to anticipate day/night cycles gives organisms a fitness advantage. For instance, this would allow plants to anticipate daylight and adjust their photosynthetic metabolism [...]
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How Do We Know Plants Can Tell Time? The daily opening and closing of flowers and the rhythmic leaf movement of some plants suggests, even to the casual observer, that plants have an internal clock. To more careful observers, such as Carl Linnaeus and Charles Darwin, the evidence was clear that plants can tell time. [...]
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Posted in plant genes on Nov 3rd, 2011
Does Ingested Plant Material Regulate Your Gene Expression? Research results published in the journal Cell Research provide evidence that small bits of genetic material from ingested plants may regulate gene expression in animals. (for the original paper, see Ref 1 below; and summaries of these findings can be found in refs. 2 & 3 below) [...]
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