Planthopper (Fulgoroidea) (8686208002)

Plant Sugar Levels Found To Determine Wing Size In Planthopper Pests

Interactions between hosts and their pathogens are numerous and come in so many forms that we continue to categorize them to this day. A unique example often seen in insects is the capability known as polyphenism, where two or more different phenotypes, or physical traits, can emerge from the same genome. This is commonly seen […]

Ripatella 4644

Combating A Bacterial Scourge And Its Assault On Global Vineyards

Some pathogens are content to focus on their one host and live in their niche of evolutionary propagation. They go about their ongoing generational fight to one-up their host, just as their host works to outperform and prevent infection by the pathogen. Occasionally, one of these sorts of pathogens will branch off and appropriate one […]

Early embryonic development of Encarsia pergandiella. Nature as art or vice versa?

Mapping Cell Lineages Using CRISPR Cas9-Based Genetic Scarring

There are a number of errors that can happen when an organism develops from an embryo to an adult. A single missing cell or a cell out of place can have catastrophic results for the matured individual. Even a slightly altered rate of cell division at such an early stage is more likely to cause […]

Samphire salt marsh - St Kilda South Australia

Plant Salt Tolerance: Recent Research in Biotechnology

The health of plants is paramount for farmers, gardeners, and scientists alike. They not only provide the food we need to survive, but their overall well-being is a marker for the strength of the environmental conditions around them. And there are many things, much like with us humans, that can be a cause for alarm. […]

Neuron cluster

New CRISPR Tool Manipulates RNA Splicing to Control the Transcriptome

Control over the genome and the epigenome has continued to be a prime focal point for the fields of science. New genome editing technologies and their related epigenetic tools has only exacerbated this spotlight. However, there are other areas of expression control that are available and some techniques, such as RNA interference (RNAi), seem to […]

A thaliana seedlings (cropped)

Manipulating The Plant-Bacteria Microbiome To Optimize Growth

When dealing with plants in a lab, in a garden, or in an agricultural field, we often forget that there was originally a whole biome that those plants were involved in in the wild. We often try to simulate those conditions to the best of our capabilities, but there is still so much knowledge we […]

Stem rust close up

A Decades Old Once Thought Eradicated Scourge Returns To Europe

As we have seen so often in recent years when it comes to human pathogens, eradicating a disease from a major population, country, or continent does not mean those results will be permanent forever. Any sort of laxity in preventative treatment and strict efforts against global spread can result in the re-emergence of a deadly […]

Smed

The Secrets of the Regenerating Flatworm’s Genome Are Unveiled

When studying such complex topics as wholesale body replication and regeneration of limbs, it is a heady subject to tackle all at once. And it’s unlikely that beginning on something the size of mammals, using model organisms or not, is going to reveal anything at all without a basic understanding of how regeneration is supposed […]

Neuronal explosion

Stem Cells Modified To Sensory Neurons May Help Treat Paralysis

Our nervous system directs most of our body’s mechanisms without us being away of it. Motor neurons are involved in moving parts of our body, sensory neurons give us each of our major secondary senses like our sense of pain or temperature, and interneurons connect all the other neurons together into a combined whole that […]

VariousPills

Pharmacogenomics: Genetics As Personalized Medicine

With the great strides and advances in medicine that have been brought to the stage in the past several decades and especially in the past ten years, there has been a shift in focus and perspective in the pharmacological community. Previously, the task had been to develop medicines to treat conditions big and small or, […]