Intercropping maize and beans

RNA Interference: Current Research in Plant Biotechnology

Once upon a time, scientists thought genetics and genomes were fairly straightforward. A gene encodes a protein and that protein carries out the actions that cause physical, metabolic effects and even phenotypic effects visible to others. It was a direct and simple system, a functional way for something formed through natural selection to be built. […]

Adipogénesis

New Stem Cell State Made From Fat Cells Plays A Role In Obesity Onset

As food and agriculture have expanded through global cooperation and innovation, this has coincided with a greater ease in developing high-selling products such as sugar. The downside of this new capacity is that many food products have begun to use at least a small amount of sugar to improve taste of those same foods and […]

MicroRNA and mRNA visualization in differentiating C1C12 cells

New Synthesis Provides Possible Abiogenesis Answer for RNA Replication

Biology, chemistry, and physics often overlap in topics they cover, necessitating collaborations across fields for this or that experiment. There are crossover fields that fall more on one side or the other, often depending on the particular technologies used in that field. But there is rarely a more intertwined field of study than that which […]

Cacao

Providing Pathogen Resistance To Cacao Trees Using CRISPR-Cas9

When it comes to growing niche products, any sort of harm to the plants could prove disastrous to the overall yield itself. This is especially so if that plant is only grown in certain regions due to soil and weather requirements. That is the case for the subject of chocolate, a billion dollar industry that […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Creek and old-growth forest-Larch Mountain

The Role of Prions in Plants: An Overview

The diseases out there in the world seem limitless. Every new nook and cranny we uncover shows new lifeforms and new diseases they cause or that are subjected upon them. The Earth is just a melting pot of infection (and parasitism) of every species trying to take advantage of every other. Due to their ubiquity, […]

HIV-budding-Color

CRISPR RNP Alteration Proves Key To Avoiding Human Immune Response

Gene editing itself has truly just been the start of the modern biotechnological revolution. As time has passed, the nuance of capability with tools like CRISPR has evolved to not only be more precise, but to also have additional options beyond just additions or deletions of genes. New versions have included things like inducing point […]

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 […]