Feelin’ No Pain? An amazing short story, entitled “The Sound Machine”, by the British writer Roald Dahl was first published in the September 17, 1949 issue of the New Yorker. In this story, “A man named Klausner invents a machine that can hear sound the human ear cannot hear. It …
“Double helix in the sky tonight Throw out the hardware Let’s do it right” – Steely Dan Here A CRISPR, There A CRISPR, Everywhere A CRISPR, CRISPR…. Yikes! You can hardly go through a week these days without reading some headline with “CRISPR” in the title. (Even in Time magazine!) …
Firstly, What Is A Roundup Ready® Crop? Well, let’s start out with: What’s Roundup®? Briefly, Roundup® is the commercial name for the herbicide glyphosate, first made and sold by Monsanto in the 1970’s. You can read more about Roundup® HERE. “Roundup Ready®” is Monsanto’s trade name for crops (soybean, maize, …
From Decaf Coffee Plants To Non-Browning Apples Have you ever had a really good cup of decaf coffee? Me neither. This is likely because most decaf coffee results from chemical processing of normal coffee beans. But why would anyone want coffee without caffeine? And why do plants make caffeine in …
Plant-Based Vaccines – A Great Idea It’s been over 20 years since I introduced students in my plant sciences classes to the idea of using genetically-engineered plants (GMOs) as a source of edible vaccines. Basically, the idea was that some crop plants could be genetically engineered to produce vaccines in …
A Flowering Uber? Batman has the Batmobile. Dr. Who has the Tardis. Is it possible that the protein that triggers flowering in plants also has its own special transport vehicle? A paper from Prof. Hao Yu’s lab at National University of Singapore published in the 6 June 2016 issue of …
Land Plants Do Affect the Climate About 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by oceans, and marine phytoplankton likely play a significant role in cloud formation via ice nucleation (and, thus, affect the weather and climate). For example, please see Ref. 1 below. But a paper published in 2015 …
Potatoes And Tomatoes And Deadly Nightshade Two recent reports (1) that potato plants boost the chemical defenses in their leaves when their tubers are under attack (see Ref. 1 below) and (2) Why Tomato Leaves Smell “Grassy”? (see Ref. 2 below) reminded me of how fascinating the biochemistry is in …
Here, There, and Everywhere? Recent headlines – China to acquire Syngenta and Chinese farmers are illegally growing GMO corn: Greenpeace – got me wondering about the proliferation (or lack of it) of GMO crop plants outside the USA. It’s seems well-known that biotech crops are not welcome in most of …
Tearing Down The Paywalls? Over the years scribbling this blog, I’ve often been frustrated when trying to provide readers with links to material I’ve referenced. This is because, in many cases, the scientific information in question has been published in a journal article that is blocked by a paywall. But …