Recent Posts

Staining starch granules in living plants

Starch granules are synthesized in the leaves of chloroplast during the day and degraded in the subsequent night. To visualise starch granules the tissue usually has to be fixed, which prevents live imaging. Here Ichikawa et al. set out to find a highly specific dye to image starch granules in living…

Soluble and insoluble α-glucan synthesis in yeast by enzyme suites derived from maize endosperm

Starch is a polymer of α-glucose which is assembled into insoluble, semi-crystalline granules in plants. It is not known why we see only insoluble starch granules in plants and no soluble α-glucan polymers. To investigate this, Boehlein et al. took a synthetic biology approach. Eleven starch metabolism…