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 […]

Cotton boll nearly ready for harvest

Transgenic Cotton and Phosphite May Replace The Need For Herbicides

In order to promote healthy and vibrant crops, we have to deal with all the stresses and competition this entails for our burgeoning plants. Farmers do their best to help reduce limitations on growth by applying fertilizers, nutrients, water, and overall using mixed soils and crop rotation in order to create the best possible living […]

Spotted-wing Drosophila (Drosophila suzukii) male (15359228246)

Medea Gene Drive Developed To Target The Summer Fruit Fly

The worldwide migration of insect pests has only become more of a concern as plants, animals, and materials have begun being shipped or flown to places around the globe. Ways to control these pests through providing resistance to plants or by killing off the insects directly has proven effective, but only to a point. Many […]

Corn earworm

New Hybrid Swarm Combines Deadly Agricultural Pests Into Mega-Pests

Protecting farmers and their agricultural output around the world is a daunting task. Each region has its own trials and tribulations related to their temperature, rainfall, soil consistency, and of course, their pathogens. An unfortunate side effect of the otherwise hugely beneficial impact of international trade is that the pathogens faced in one corner of […]

Liver stage malaria parasite

Preventing Resistance By Using Scarcity To Force Pathogen Competition

Drug resistant pathogens are an ongoing plague for the medical field and efforts to find original drugs and other solutions are slow going. The past few years, however, have seen some new scientific discoveries that might finally prove to be a more long-term option to help deal with such disease-causing offenders. These contemporary options though […]

Insect eye

Developmental Biology Causes Extra Beetle Eyes To Form

Developmental biology can be a wild field to study. Through looking into the fundamental genes controlling body structure and the formation of the body as a whole, strange and bizarre effects can be discovered from the smallest of changes. One of the most famous being the creation of fruit flies that grow a pair of […]

Utricularia gibba3

Carnivorous, Flowering Bladderwort Reveals Depths of Gene Duplication

Genetics can get weird. Especially so in plants, which are more conducive to hybridization and duplications of their entire genome. Polyploidy, as such a duplication is called, is often rampant across ancestral lineages of plants and makes species classification taxing, to say the least. The Flowers and the Carnivores The flowering plants, also known as […]

Staphylococcus aureus VISA 2

New Modified Antibodies Enable Fight Against MRSA And Other Bacteria

The human immune system is usually a tireless worker that does its best to keep us protected from pathogen invasion. But even for all of its complexity, there are certain parts of it that fail hard when confronted. Enemy Identification When it comes to combating bacteria wishing to harm us, one of the first actions […]

Rosa Red Chateau01

The Creation Of An Electricity-Transferring Cyborg Rose

Plants have been used for a lot of purposes over the years. Other than food and decoration, they have helped in creating clothing, lumber for construction, soaps and oils for showers, a huge variety of dyes for fabrics and other more artistic methods, and so much more. Now, researchers at Linköping University in Sweden have […]