Scanning Plants? Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to identify all the different plant species in your backyard or in a nearby park from just small pieces of their leaves? And how cool would it be to use a smartphone app to determine exactly what kind of plants are…
On the Past, Present & Future of Plant Genetic Engineering Why would anyone want to insert foreign genes into plants? When and where was this technology invented? And how does it work? Who makes money from this technology? If you grow genetically-engineered crops in the field, won’t the foreign genes…
Forever Young? In a previous post, we saw how some Spanish scientists genetically modified (GM) plants in the genus Pelargonium (more commonly known as geraniums) so that they don’t produce pollen. (You can view the abstract of this paper here or read a provisional copy of the complete paper via…
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…
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…
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…