80 articles from WEDNESDAY 8.9.2021

Exploring the genetic ma(i)ze: Functional genomics can help molecular breeding of maize

For centuries, the vast physical diversity of maize, the most popular cereal grain crop globally, has fascinated biologists and plant breeders alike. Early breeders selected the maize variants with good, preferrable traits and propagated them for a long time to develop "true breeding" or inbred lines that show the same favorable features, for instance, the desired kernel color or size, for...

Scientists investigate macrocyclic peptides as new drug templates

Thanks to our understanding of molecular biology, we have made tremendous progress in medicine, with scientists shedding light on the molecular mechanisms of several diseases. However, despite knowing how these diseases occur and develop within cells, some remain untreatable due to the inability of currently available drugs to reach their targets. One such example of an unreachable drug target is...

Developing digital twins for improved hurricane prediction

More than half of the U.S. population lives in coastal watershed counties or parishes. Coastal communities along the Gulf of Mexico are among the most heavily populated—also a region where high concentrations of energy resources have made it a national hub for many large-scale carbon-to-capture storage facilities.

Scientists see evidence of first-order phase change in nuclear matter

New evidence suggests that protons and neutrons go through a "first-order" phase transition—a kind of stop-and-go change in temperature—when they "melt." This is similar to how ice melts: Energy first increases the temperature, and then, during the transition, the temperature stays steady while the energy transforms a solid to a liquid. Only when all the molecules are liquid can the...

Pollinators contribute to flowering plant diversity

Holden Forests & Gardens (HF&G) Scientist Na Wei, Ph.D., and her collaborators from the University of Pittsburgh and East Tennessee State University discovered how pollinators may contribute to the maintenance of flowering plant diversity. This study that accelerates our understanding of biodiversity conservation is now published in the journal Nature.

Understanding coronavirus variants

With the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants such as beta and delta, people are not only getting a refresher course on the Greek alphabet, but also experiencing confusion and anxiety about what the variants mean for public health. A new article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, asks scientists to weigh in on the changing coronavirus...

New research on electrical signal transduction in tomato plants

Electrical signals commonly occur in plants in response to various environmental changes and have a dominant function in plant acclimation. Recently, a research team from Zhejiang University in China published new findings on electrical signal transduction during herbivory or wounding in tomato plants. The study can be found in the open access journal Frontiers of Agricultural Science and...

Using electricity to give chemistry a boost

Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) are a promising class of materials that have many applications as catalysts, sensors and for gas storage. Widely studied over the past two decades, MOFs are typically produced using chemical processes that require high heat and high pressure.

Researchers discover how plants can respond to threats

Plants are constantly exposed to adverse environmental influences and attacks, for example from pest infestation. An international team of researchers led by Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) has now described a central part of the signal mechanism used by plants to respond to threats and thus initiate a defense response in unaffected parts of the plant. In the current edition of the...

Opportunities and limits of AI in climate modeling

Earth system models are the most important tools for quantitatively describing the physical state of Earth, and—for example, in the context of climate models—predicting how it might change in the future under the influence of human activities. How the increasingly used methods of artificial intelligence (AI) can help to improve these forecasts and where the limits of the two approaches lie has...