Transposable elements are known to affect their neighboring genes, but they were so far unknown to affect the function of distant genes. Cho and Paszkowski observed a high level of transposon transcription expressed in rice. A transposon with root specific expression, MIKKI, was found to contain an imperfect…

Visual and other cues attract pollinators. Bees vision is skewed towards blue colors, but they also visit non-blue flowers. Moyroud et al. looked at how petal surface textures affect bee responses. The authors observed that similar parallel cuticular striations in diverse angiosperm lineages show convergent…

One of the great questions of biology is how and why C4 photosynthesis pathway evolved independently more than 60 times. The advantages are obvious (increased productivity), but the underlying molecular predisposition to this transition remains poorly defined. Using a comparative transcriptomics approach…

Review: DNA sequencing at 40: past, present and future ($) Shendure et al. provide a superb review of how DNA sequencing technology has changed over the years and how these changes open up new applications. They start with the Maxam and Gilbert chemical cleavage and the Sanger “chain-termination”…

Yesterday I attended a "Careers in Industry" discussion where it was noted that people working in industry often benefit from more structured mentoring programs than are the norm in academia. The lack of formal mentoring programs and mentor training has long been noted as a weakness in the academic…

Are you interested in science writing? Do you want to help people understand complex scientific issues?   Apply for the ASPB/AAAS Mass Media Science & Engineering Fellows Program and learn how to increase public understanding of science and technology. Fellows in the 10-week 2018 summer…

GOES magazine (www.goesmagazine.org) provides the opportunity for science students to get involved in publishing and not only writing articles about their research, experiences and scientific fun facts, but also seeing how editing, proof-reading and designing is done in real time. GOES stands for Global…

Peroxisomes are endoplasmic reticulum-derived membrane-enclosed organelles in which many oxidative enzymatic reactions are compartmentalized. These reactions and their products contribute to energy production, detoxification, and signaling. Kao et al. review our understanding of the plant peroxisome,…