exploring the inner workings of plants
Posted in Plant Science on Dec 19th, 2011
Forensic Botany? In the last few decades, forensic science has seen a large growth in research and application. This site that profiles forensic science college programs does a decent job of explaining how the forensic science profession operates. While there may be fewer car explosions and shoot-outs than on television, it’s still a very cool [...]
Posted in Plant Science on Sep 13th, 2011
No Respect? A recent online news item entitled Why We Need Plant Scientists attracted my attention a few days ago. It’s mostly about a paper published in the scientific journal New Phytologist (see ref. 1 below) that prioritizes research questions currently facing “the few, the proud and the chronically underfunded” (my quote) scientists that work [...]
Posted in Plant Cells, Plant Science, Plant Signaling on Sep 5th, 2011
A Brief Stroll Down Memory Lane Previously, we delved into the subject of “long-term” (weeks to months) plant “memory” by exploring what’s new on the subject of vernalization, that is, how some plants “remember” that they have experienced winter. In this case, a “cold” treatment of some plant species over the course of weeks leads [...]
Posted in Plant Science on Feb 27th, 2011
Escape of the Transgenes? Last week, I was a bit startled as I listened to a podcast of NPR’s Science Friday program. In this episode (2/18/2011), host Ira Flatow was interviewing the new president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Dr. Nina Fedoroff (a distinguished plant molecular biologist, by the way). [...]
Posted in Plant Science on Feb 1st, 2011
Whither Plant Genetic Engineering? The first generation of transgenic plants was in its infancy in the 1980′s, came of age in the 1990′s and seems to have settled into staid middle age in the past ten years. So, what’s next? A succinct answer is provided here thanks to the Crop Science Society of America (CSSA): [...]
Posted in Plant Science on Jan 24th, 2011
“Apple, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie….” After the initial reports in 1983 of successful genetic transformation of tobacco, petunia and sunflower plants using Agrobacterium to mediate gene transfer, this technique was tried on many other crop plants. By 1989, a colleague at the time summarized a “Plant Gene Transfer” meeting he’d attended by singing the line “Apple, [...]
Posted in Plant Science on Jan 10th, 2011
Where Do New Plants Come From? Well, new plant species arose (and still arise) through plant evolution, that is, as a consequence of hundreds of millions of years of natural selection. About 12,000 years ago, however, humans got involved. Early examples of humans trying to manage plants for their benefit likely included burning of forests [...]
Posted in Plant Science on Dec 1st, 2010
Biotech in Your Garage. Is it possible that the kids across the street could someday soon be creating genetically engineered plants in their garage or greenhouse? (Now there’s a scary thought.) This may be more feasible than you think. An article called Garage Biology in a recent issue of Nature magazine (see ref. 1 below) [...]
Posted in Plant Science on Feb 11th, 2010
iPlants: An Introduction From movies and video games to landscape design to education to scientific research, we are increasingly encountering plants in silico (that is, computer-simulated plants). Virtual plants fall into three categories: (1) computer-generated images, (2) outputs from computer algorithms, and (3) computer-searchable plant gene and protein databases. What follows is a summary of [...]
