Biosentients - Science Biology… etc

Thanks once again to Jackie Chambers, UBC Botanical Garden horticulturist, for supplying both the photograph and write-up for today’’s ………

Thanks once again to Jackie Chambers of UBC Botanical Garden for submitting a photograph and ………

This week's issue of Nature features the draft genome of the transgenic 'SunUp' Papaya, the first commercial virus-resistant transgenic fruit tree to be sequenced. From Nature ………

Recent research that links specific pieces of RNA to an infectious organism’s duplication and spread could lead the way to the prevention of viroids, pathogens that can kill or damage food crops and other plants. The findings and the research approach used by Ohio State University researchers also could have applications in the study of how certain viruses spread in humans because the pathogens have some similar characteristics……..

The pathogen responsible for Sudden Oak Death first got its grip in California’s forests outside a nursery in Santa Cruz and at Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County before spreading out to eventually kill millions of oaks and tanoaks along the Pacific Coast, as per a new study led by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley. It provides, for the first time, evidence of how the epidemic unfolded in this state……..

Air pollution from power plants and automobiles is destroying the fragrance of flowers and thereby inhibiting the ability of pollinating insects to follow scent trails to their source, a new University of Virginia study indicates. This could partially explain why wild populations of some pollinators, especially bees which need nectar for food are declining in several areas of the world, including California and the Netherlands……..

University of Delaware researchers, in collaboration with U.S. and international colleagues, have found a new type of molecule–a kind of “micro-switch”–that can turn off genes in rice, which is the primary source of food for more than half the world’s population. The discovery is published in the March 25 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America……..

Whenever I put the word “porn” on my blog I get lots of hits. I need all the help I can get, so as a sort of follow-up to my post on the science behind variegated leaves, here’s some variegated leaf porn from Roger Williams Park Botanical Conservancy in ………

Thank you to UBC Botanical Garden horticulturist Jackie Chambers for today’’s photographs and write-up, much ………

The last photograph and write-up in the underutilized plants series will appear on Monday. Connor and I are still sorting out some details about the entry, a task made more difficult by the fact that I'’m 2000km away from Vancouver and not online often. So, that’’s the explanation for today’’s exceptionally late entry! In the meantime, Connor has assembled this ………