Why we’re writing What We’re Reading and how you can contribute…. (more) Nature Outlook Supplement: Food Security (OA) Nature has published an Outlook feature on the topic of Food Security with the following overview articles, all useful for teaching: Food security, Nutrition: A world of insecurity, Agrobiodiversity: The living library, Bioengineering: Solar upgrade, […]
Kassis asked biology, biomedical engineering and bioengineering faculty how important they considered several criteria for recognition as an author and rank on authorship list. A key finding is that, “Overall, there seemed to be a consensus that the time spent conducting experiments, coming up with a hypothesis, analyzing data, and writing the manuscript were the […]
Aircraft engines release CO2 into the atmosphere, but particles produced from aircraft emissions can also affect climate through aerosol production that leads to cloud formation. Moore et al. examined how incorporating plant-based biofuels (Camelina oil) affected the production of aerosols. They found that particle number and mass were reduced when biofuels were incorporated into the […]
Parasitic plants draw nutrients from their hosts. Spallek et al. explored the molecular interaction between the parasitic plant Phtheirospermum japonicum (in the Orobranchaceae family) and the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. They demonstrated movement of tracers from the host to the parasite through the xylem. They also showed that cytokinin hormone synthesis is induced in the […]
Regulated movement to and from the plasma membrane (PM) has emerged as an important strategy for controlling the activity of plasma membrane proteins such as transporters and receptors. Jonsson et al. investigated the cellular machinery required for the insertion of the auxin-transport protein AUX1 into the plasma membrane from the trans-Golgi network. AUX1 is necessary […]
Cell walls are complex mixtures of cellulose microfibrils, proteins and other materials. Their mechanical properties can be measured and modeled, but it is not always simple to translate these measurements to changes at the molecular level. Zhang et al. used atomic force microscopy to provide an unprecedented view of how cellulose microfibrils respond to stress […]
Cell size is determined by growth rate and frequency of division. Studies in yeast revealed mechanisms that coordinate these processes, as well as the crucial checkpoint controls that ensure the cell is “ready” to divide, but can models from single-celled organisms be applied to multicellular ones that have intrinsic differences including mechanical constraints? Jones et […]
Cereal grasses are of course economically important, but they also have large repetitive genomes with large pericentromeric regions that have been difficult to map and sequence. Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is used for human and animal food and fermented to produce beer and whisky. A barley sequence assembly was published in 2012, but now Mascher […]
We all learned the series milli-, micro-, nano-, pico-, femto-, but I didn’t learn atto- (10-18), as it’s rarely used in biology, representing such a tiny number (FYI, atto- is followed by zepto- and yocto-). Li et al provide a method for quantifying gibberellin (GA) hormones at “near attomole” amounts from a single Arabidopsis flower. […]