This week’s Research in Focus is reprinted from an In Brief by Science Editor Nancy Hofmann in The Plant Cell, which summarizes a new article by Lowe et al. This study uncovers a new way to transform and regenerate plants in culture, greatly increasing the efficiency. The method involves expressing genes that promote developmental transitions, … Read more
Our understandings of the forces that have shaped Earth and the forces that have shaped life on Earth have common roots. Charles Darwin was famously inspired by the work of early geologists such as Charles Lyell, who proposed that Earth was subject to slow but gradual change. This idea recurs in Darwin’s insights about evolution … Read more
Recently, we’ve been profiling first authors of Plant Cell papers that are selected for In Brief summaries. Here are the first-author profiles from the August issue of The Plant Cell. Aman Y. Husbands and Vasudha Aggarwal, featured first authors of In Planta Single-Molecule Pull-down (SiMPull) Reveals Tetrameric Stoichiometry of HD-ZIPIII:LITTLE ZIPPER Complexes. Aman Y. Husbands … Read more
There’s a lot of buzz right now about indoor farming. I’m sure you’ve seen photos of fuchsia-illuminated lettuces hydroponically growing in abandoned warehouses, airplane hangars, and disused subway terminals (see for examples here and here and here.) One of the goals of these programs is to cut the energy costs of food shipping, and another … Read more
Chemical genetics is a powerful complement to conventional genetics. Rather than knocking out gene functions, protein (or other) functions can be perturbed through the addition of small molecules. One advantage is that several related proteins can be affected at the same time, avoiding the difficulties that come from genetic redundancy. Another is that treatment regimes … Read more