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 […]
Tracking plant pathogens is no simple matter. Due to their possible environmental hidey holes being in the soil, the air, other plants, or the host plants themselves lying dormant, any and every possibility must be accounted for. And the triggers that begin active pathogenicity and harm to the plant is connected to a convoluted system […]
Nitrogen fixation is a crucial part of plant growth and agriculture. Because the element nitrogen is a critical ingredient for proper development of plants, they need a steady supply of it in order to grow healthy and have a high yield of offspring seeds. For most plants, this is done by relying on nitrogen already […]
The process of beer-making is complicated. The brewing process has an array of steps that need to be followed fairly precisely or you risk ruining the flavor of your concoction. A general description of the process is that brewer’s yeast, usually specially cultivated strains of the model organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is used along with sugars […]
When studying the impact or function of particular genes, sometimes just being able to have them be expressed isn’t good enough. An always on state can be just as frustrating and produce just as useless data as an off state would. This is especially true for signaling and transportation genes, where the entire point of […]
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, […]
Contamination of the environment is a topic oft spoken of in an incredibly broad sense. That the actions of some governments or organizations are damaging to their surroundings comes as no surprise, but discussions on the specifics and what can be done to fix the issues rarely comes up in the public societal consciousness. The […]
We think about them in a ton of different ways. Fungi can be a delicacy in food or they can be a deadly poison. They are beneficial mutualists with plants or harmful parasitic pests. But there is one more feature of theirs that has become more and more prominent in recent decades with the emergence […]
Ethnobotany is one of those fields that encompasses more than just itself. It is larger than the sum of its parts. Connected to the wider field of ethnobiology, it relates to all of its other sister fields, like ethnoentomology, ethnozoology, and ethnomycology. And discussing just those misses out on the various other culture specific fields […]
It has long been thought that fossils were a dead medium. There was no real way to obtain any sort of genetic material from them due to the vast time periods involved and so taxonomists and other researchers just had to do their best at fitting ancient creatures into the tree of life however they […]
