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. […]

CSIRO ScienceImage 11085 A scanning electron micrograph of a female dust mite

Evolutionary Rewiring of Dust Mite Genome Made Unique RNAi Silencing

Parasites are a common theme of biological research due to the impact they have on people’s lives and their ubiquity in organisms around the world. It is practically impossible to find an organism that doesn’t have some sort of parasitic pathogen on or inside them. Even many of the parasites themselves have parasites inside of […]

Cuscuta campestris

Parasitic Plants Manipulate the Genetic Expression of Their Host Plants

The arms race in the plant world is a brutal competition for dominance where failure means death. As scientific understanding of genetics has broadened over the decades, we’ve also come to realize that the organisms in nature have been utilizing even the most complicated of these mechanisms for their advantage in order to survive. Any […]