Fighting World Hunger: Robotics Aid in the Study of Corn and Drought Tolerance from MU News Bureau on Vimeo. Developing drought tolerant corn that makes efficient use of available water is vital to sustain the estimated 9 billion global population by 2050. In March 2014, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded the University of Missouri […]
When the uptake of CO2 (A) is plotted against absorbed irradiance (I), at low I there is a noticeable bend that occurs around the light compensation point (I where CO2 release due to mitochondrial respiration is balanced by CO2 uptake by photosynthesis). When the slopes of both parts of the curve are extrapolated back to […]
A promoter is a region that “determines the position, direction, frequency, and timing of transcription”. A cell can decode the sequence of the promoter to ensure appropriate transcription, but we still can’t. Tokizawa et al. performed a large-scale survey of promoters by sequencing regions upstream of transcription start sites. They identified promoters corresponding to 80% […]
Many legumes are important crops, and to date ten legume genomes have been sequenced, including soybean, common bean, mung bean, and two species of wild peanut. Wang et al. used hierarchical comparative genomics analysis of the ten legume genomes, which enabled them to detected gene colinearity between and within genomes, identify colinearity-supported homologs, orthologs and […]
Trehalose 6-phosphate (T6P) is a disaccharide formed from two glucose sugars, and more importantly is a signal of glucose availability and regulator of energy homeostasis. Acting via the protein kinase SnRK1, T6P controls the allocation of carbon, leading the plant down a “feast” (growth) or “famine” (survival) metabolic and growth pathway. Paul et al. review […]
Knowing where a gene is expressed provides valuable information about its function, but that information is compromised if the RNA source is contaminated by other tissues. Schon and Nodine investigated the extent to which Arabidopsis embryo and endosperm transcriptome datasets are affected by tissue contamination. Using seed coat-specific RNAs as markers of maternal tissues and […]
A model is only as good as the data that go into it (garbage in, garbage out), so any effort to improve remote sensing data will contribute to better global models. Badgley et al. describe a new parameter, near-infrared reflectance of vegetation (NIRV), that more accurately quantifies photosynthesis at the global scale (Gross Primary Productivity, […]
The Arctic provides numerous opportunities to study how climate change and isolation affect plant populations. Birkeland et al. queried the genetic diversity within isolated populations of seven heat-loving (thermophilous) species in the high Arctic (74° – 81° N) Svalbard Archipelago, near the well-known seedbank. These thermophilous plants are thought to be relicts from early Holocene warm […]
Roughly 66 million years ago Earth was hit by a huge asteroid, resulting in climate changes that led to mass extinctions, most famously of the non-avian dinosaurs. This catastrophic event, which marks the boundary between the Cretaceous (K) and Paleogene (Pg) periods, also caused widespread mass extinctions in the plant kingdom. Previously, it has been […]