Feature Channels: Plants

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Lignin, the complex polymer that gives plants their structural integrity, makes them difficult to break down and creates challenges for the creation of biochemicals and bioproducts. Building blocks that are present in small amounts in the lignin of the bioenergy crop poplar are valuable platform chemicals that are easy to “clip-off” during plant deconstruction. Scientists engineered a new type of poplar to have more of a specific building block in its lignin and less lignin overall. This results in wood that is easier to deconstruct and more valuable as a bioproduct raw material.

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In the Arctic, plant community type strongly impacts how energy is exchanged between the land and atmosphere.

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Despite recent, torrential rains, most of Southern California remains in a drought.

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Josee Guindon, DVM, Ph.D., has been named the 2023 William A Devane Young Investigator Award honoree by the International Cannabinoid Research Society.

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Research shows redwoods have varying sensitivity to drought, and that rising temperatures may affect tree performance in unexpected ways—results that are both concerning and hopeful.

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In many ways, Madagascar is a biologist’s dream, a real-life experiment in how isolation on an island can spark evolution.

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RUDN University agronomists have studied the thermodynamics of hydrogels, which must absorb water from the air and hold it in the ground to prevent evaporation. It turned out that this approach is unlikely to help save agriculture from drought - hydrogels retain water too well and give it poorly.

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A new study identifies the genetic underpinnings for why broccoli heads become abnormal when it’s hot, providing insight into effects of climate-induced warming for all crops and pointing the way for breeding heat-resistant new varieties.

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Despite some hesitation about gene-edited foods, taste trumps everything, according to a Washington State University-led survey of U.S. consumers.

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With the world’s population topping 8 billion last year, it’s clear that humans have achieved a unique status in Earth’s history. We are the only creature that dominate all other organisms on the planet, from animals and fungi to plants and microbes.

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DOE funding allows researchers to gain closer look into plant-microbe symbioses.

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A RUDN University biologist and colleagues from Iran have found bacteria that can become a potential biological drug against a pest fungus that infects rice. Unlike chemical fungicides, such a bio-agent is harmless to the environment and does not lead to the formation of biological resistance.

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When an outbreak of sylvatic plague decimated black-tailed prairie dog numbers in the Thunder Basin National Grassland in 2017, researchers saw an opportunity for a “natural experiment” to explore the impact of the rodents’ die-off on the plants and other wildlife in that area of northeast Wyoming.

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Here are some of the latest articles that have been added to the Marine Science channel on Newswise, a free source for media.

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Wind, sewage sludge, and waste water carry tyre wear particles from roads onto farmland. A new lab study shows: The pollutants contained in the particles could get into the vegetables grown there.

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When horseweed is grown in contaminated soil, it extracts and accumulates heavy metals like lead, copper, and zinc. These fast-growing plants could help to detoxify even highly polluted environments.

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Green leaves and photosynthesis were once considered essential characteristics of plants.

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Climate change could overexpose rare underwater "marimo" algae balls to sunlight, killing them off according to a new study at the University of Tokyo.

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For decades, scientists have been stumped by the signals plants send themselves to initiate photosynthesis, the process of turning sunlight into sugars. UC Riverside researchers have now decoded those previously opaque signals.

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Scientists have discovered that the atmosphere contained far less CO2 than previously thought when forests emerged on our planet, the new study has important implications for understanding how land plants affect the climate.

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Plants that live on land, such as spinach, grow by using sunlight to perform photosynthesis.

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Lignin in plant cell walls can be broken down into component polymers that can in turn be converted into valuable bioproducts, but deconstructing lignin is difficult. Researchers have now showed that some solvents are more effective than others at getting between the cellulosic and lignin polymers in switchgrass variants.

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By collecting electrons naturally transported within plant cells, scientists can generate electricity. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have, for the first time, used a succulent plant to create a living “bio-solar cell” that runs on photosynthesis.

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Public input is needed for federal regulatory approval for the blight-tolerant American chestnut developed by the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Once approval is received, ESF and The American Chestnut Foundation can begin distribution.

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The five-year multidisciplinary initiative is focused on tree species critical to Western Apache tribal communities and includes multiple researchers from throughout NAU.

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To understand how plants respond to drought condition, researchers combined three cutting-edge metabolomic and imaging technologies at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory. The study revealed that different species of plants use different strategies to survive drought conditions.

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During photosynthesis, a chemical reaction jumpstarted by sunlight breaks down chemicals into the food plants need to repair themselves and to grow. But as researchers attempt to better understand photosynthesis, they have hit a roadblock when it comes to being able to see the fundamental structures and processes in a plant.

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UC San Diego scientists have identified a long-sought carbon dioxide sensor in plants, a discovery that holds implications for trees, crops and wildfires. The researchers found that two proteins work together to form the sensor, which is key for water evaporation, photosynthesis and plant growth.

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Principal Investigator Ivan Baxter, PhD, member, Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, will lead a five-year, $16 million multi-institutional project to deepen the understanding of water use efficiency (WUE) in sorghum, a versatile bioenergy crop.

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More and more trees are suffering the consequences of decades of man-made climate change.

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While peatlands have historically stored massive amounts of soil carbon, warming is expected to enhance decomposition, leading to a positive climate change feedback effect. This study experimentally warmed peatlands in northern Minnesota and observed increased methane production relative to carbon dioxide release. This methane release process is likely to amplify global climate warming.

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Human-released greenhouse gasses are causing the world to warm, and with that warming comes increasing stress for many of the planet’s plants and animals.

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Nature in Madagascar, an island off southeast Africa slightly larger than metropolitan France, is so unusual that 82% of its plant species and 90% of its vertebrates are endemic, only occurring there.

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Peptyde Bio Inc. announced that it has closed an oversubscribed $1.2M pre-seed funding round. Peptyde Bio is the first company spun out of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center by Danforth Technology Company (DTC), the wholly-owned subsidiary formed by the Danforth Center in February 2022.

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A University of Delaware researcher will use a grant from NASA to investigate light optimization for growing food in space, focusing on the ways changing light conditions over time can optimize lettuce productivity and nutritional quality under super-elevated carbon dioxide and low relative humidity.

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They are the salt-tolerant shrubs that thrive in the toughest of conditions, but according to new UniSA research, mangroves are also avid coastal protectors, capable of surviving in heavy metal contaminated environments.

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While most flowers produce pigments that appear colourful and act as a visual cue to pollinators, some flowers also create microscopic three-dimensional patterns on their petal surfaces.

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Green Bronx Machine, Future Food Institute, Mayor of Pollica, President of ICCAR- UNESCO, and Italian coordination of the UNESCO Emblematic Communities announce LIFESTYLE FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE to partner with 600 schools in Italy to promote human and planetary health via Mediterranean Diet.

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Photosynthesis is one of the most important chemical reactions, not just for plants but also for the entire world.

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A RUDN biologist for the first time described the genetic and other features of more than 50 strains of a bacterium that infects many crops around the world. The results will be important for plant breeding for resistance to phytopathogens

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Social bees such as honeybees and bumblebees have larger foraging ranges, according to researchers at the University of Bristol.

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Electrical conductivity sensors were able to predict soil texture – especially at different depths – and correlated with corn yield data