Mycena inclinata, Clustered Bonnet, UK

Fungi Parasitism: The Ins And Outs Of Biotechnology and Biocontrol

The modern world has a multitude of issues it is facing, most of which filter through and incorporate agriculture in some fashion. Whether speaking of climate change, overpopulation, deforestation, or any number of other topics, the food supply and how we produce it is involved. For a significant chunk of the countries in the world, […]

Dugesia_japonica

Bioelectricity In Regrown Worm Heads Teaches Body Part Regeneration

A long-term goal of medicine in the big picture has been developing the field of regenerative medicine in order to work toward growing replacement organs for patients. This process has been decades in the making and, even today, can be finicky at best. Regrowing Everything Though researchers and doctors have begun succeeding more and more […]

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 […]

A fly's first breath 1

Why Don’t Damaging Mutations Kill Off Humanity And Complex Life?

How is humanity still alive? How is most complex life still going in the first place? Biologically speaking, the number of genetic mutations we have with every generation that results in a negative effect should have wiped us all out. Simple Processes Natural selection as a random process and the error rate in our own […]

Soybean fields at Applethorpe Farm

Temperature Tolerance: Recent Efforts In Biotechnology

Temperature is something we worry about in our lives all the time. What temperature is it outside so you know what to wear and what are the conditions going to be in coming days or weeks. Farmers have to worry about this as well, as excessive periods of heat or cold snaps can prove damaging […]

Nematoda Gadus Morhua Fish MArket Atlantic Canada

Parasitic Worms Use Toxic Venom To Liquefy Insects

Parasitic worms seem to be a topic being covered here more often as of late, but that’s likely because they are just as involved in every aspect of our lives as bacteria are. Understanding how these worms function can bring new insights into human health, agriculture, and more. In one of our prior articles, we […]

Dictyostelium discoideum 43

Bacteria-Eating Amoeba Effective Against Antibiotic-Resistant Biofilms

Biofilms are an ingenious evolutionary creation, but one that gives us humans a lot of trouble in fighting bacteria. Film Development Originally, there was no real need for bacteria to clump together in most situations, due to their free-floating water environment. But land surfaces (and debris in the waters) enabled them to form extracellular matrixes […]

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 […]

A juvenile root-knot nematode (Meloidogyne incognita) penetrates a tomato root - USDA-ARS

Genetic Protection For Plants Against Parasitic Worm Attack

Parasitic worms aren’t only a threat to animal or insects, plants have to deal with them as well. The Worms Attack While these sorts of worms may not outright kill their target plants, they can significantly damage them by causing root and nutrient pathways, like the xylem and phloem, to become deformed from the worms […]

Roots by cesarpb

Plants Use Root Structures To ‘Listen’ And Search For Water

Water is important for life. It is a primary source of structure and function in all life forms, even including viruses that use it as interstitial fluid for containing their viral genome. For organisms that produce their own complex compounds, commonly known as autotrophs, water remains the main source of outside material they need to […]