Plant & zo
The science of plants and more
Plants, maybe just hearing the word makes your hart beat quicker. Maybe not, up to now you just viewed plants as decorations. Not inconceivable. But plants are so much more. They are essential for us. They give us the oxygen we breathe. Give us the food we eat. Plants extremely interestingly even without knowing this. Did you know plants can do calculus? That they can detect nutrients, and grow actively towards them? That they use insects, not only for pollinating their flowers, but also as defence against other insects? Here you will read about this and more. About the ingenuity of plants, the discoveries about this made by researchers, and how plants actual do all those things.
Latest Blogs
A nice smell
A nice smell Nectar and pollen making flowers attractive for pollinators. But not only pollinators, also florivores, flower eating insects, are attracted. Researchers from Germany wondered how pollinator and florivores react to the smells that flowers emit. It turned out that both pollinators and florivores alike are recognising and are attracted by the smell bouquet…
Touch
Touch An obstacle influences plant growth. How a plant registers touch is not completely clear. Long did researchers think plants observe touch with help of their trichomes, the hairs on a leaf. But not all plants have hairy leaves. Now a group of American, German, and Danish researchers show that the pavement cells at the…
Decoy
Decoy Pathogens, we rather not have them. But keeping them away or getting rid of them is not always that easy. Sometimes they take essential processes hostage. Processes which a plant can’t do without. This makes the ideal for pathogens to use them for their own growth. Still plants are not that easily to infect.…
Hidden flowers
Hidden flowers The ever presents of plants makes that we often don’t even notice them. They are not moving, so they are not a direct danger to us. Which is sad as we also don’t see their many fascinating aspects. Did you for example know that there are plants that are literally stay hidden for…
New layer
New layer You would think that for one of the most studied plants in the world it is clear by now how it looks. Still Dutch researchers have found something new. In a bioRxiv preprint they show that the early embryo is surrounded by a thin shell, the embryo envelop. And to be fair, this…
Gained specificity
Gained specificity Plants have veins to translocate nutrients from one location in the plant to another. Phloem, for the translocation form the leaves to the roots, and xylem for the opposite direction. They are essential for a healthy plant. In their absence plants starve. Still, there is little known about the development of these veins.…
Shaped through light
Shaped through light Plants adapt their appearance to their environment. Plants grow, for example, more in hight when standing in the shadow. Light also influences the number of branches. But how this is regulated was up to now not clear. Now researchers from China and the UK showed how light regulates bud outgrow. How and…
Misleading flowers
Pattern The stomata in the leaf of a plant are more or less equally distributed. They are forming a pattern. But not at the moment of germination, then there are no stomata. Afterwards they are formed supper quickly. Researchers from America now discovered that already during embryo development this stomata pattern is being formed. The…
Chemical mines
Chemical mines Lots of our crops miss defence mechanisms against insects. A defence that is precent in their wild relatives. And to be honest, for a long time a good insect defence mechanism was not a top priority for crops. As pesticides had taken over this job. But now farmers put pesticides aside, it is…
Pattern
Pattern The stomata in the leaf of a plant are more or less equally distributed. They are forming a pattern. But not at the moment of germination, then there are no stomata. Afterwards they are formed supper quickly. Researchers from America now discovered that already during embryo development this stomata pattern is being formed. The…
All at once by the clock
All at once by the clock What we see as the flower of a sunflower consist actually out of hundreds of tiny flowers. These develop one by one, from the outside in, forming a spiral. Till the moment of opening, that they do in groups, ring by ring, the outside ring first. But how the…
Longer roots
Longer roots To access deeper located water enables a plant to better withstand drought. Helpful hereby are longer roots that penetrate deeper into the soil. It is one of the traits that breeders select during the development of drought resilient wheat. Although a big stumbling block is that there is relatively little known about which…
Loss of pressure
Loss of pressure The epidermis, the outer cell layer of a plant, protects the plant against the outside world. Their function is determined by their position in the plant. All cells in the outermost cell layer are doomed to develop into epidermis cells. Up to now it was unknown how these cells recognise their position.…
Yellow leaves for more energy
Yellow leaves for more energy Optimal use of photosynthetic capacity, the capture of energy is of great importance for a higher crop yield. Knowing this, it is not strange that for a long time breeders were selecting for greener leaves. As greener leaves mean more photosynthetic capacity. But this is not the whole story. Greener…
Unique together
Unique together The regulation of genes is done for an important part by transcription factors. But which genes a transcription factor transcribes is strongly dependent on where it is. This allows a transcription factor to regulate different genes in different tissues. The big question is: How does it do this? Now researchers from the Netherlands…
Extra root growth through infection
Extra root growth through infection Nematodes that infect plants can cause lots of damage. These parasites infect the plants through their roots. When inside, they work their way up to the vascular bundle, were they start feeding. Plants are growing more roots around the infection site, as a way of compensating. But up to now…
Pollen discrimination
Pollen discrimination When visiting flowers pollinators bring a wide variety of pollen, coming from a range of plants. From plants of the same species, but also from those that are not related at all. Plants are picky, to prevent spending their energy on the production of unviable offspring. Only pollen that are recognised as compatible…
Grip on DNA
Grip on DNA For plants that reproduce trough flowering, a proper formation of these flowers is essential. One of the important proteins in this process is LEAFY, a gene on/off switching protein. LEAFY regulates genes needed for flower formation. LEAFY can turn on some of these by itself, but for others LEAFY needs a helping…
Gene expression, a case of regulation
Gene expression, a case of regulation Expression of genes is regulated on multiple levels. Well known of these are the transcription factors, gene on/off switches. In addition, accessibility of the DNA determines if a gene can be transcribed or not. Moreover, there is regulation at the RNA level. Determining if and which part of the…
Gene editing via grafting
Gene editing via grafting Something we cannot ignore is our need for better plants. Plants that can deal better with extremes, like drought, heat, or salt. Plants that are better protected against pests. That have a higher yield. That are more nutritious. A whole shopping list. And rather yesterday than today. Techniques like gene editing…
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Plant en Zo 