How plants protect themselves from oxidative stress during iron uptake — and why this is also important for humans: Biology, chemistry and medicine: Interdisciplinary publication in Plant Physiology
Iron is a critical micronutrient for the survival of plants and humans, yet too much iron can also be toxic. An interdisciplinary research team from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) has discovered that the protein PATELLIN2 is not only involved in regulating iron levels in plants. PATELLIN2 is one of a group of proteins that […]
How a soil microbe could rev up artificial photosynthesis
Plants rely on a process called carbon fixation — turning carbon dioxide from the air into carbon-rich biomolecules – for their very existence. That’s the whole point of photosynthesis, and a cornerstone of the vast interlocking system that cycles carbon through plants, animals, microbes and the atmosphere to sustain life on Earth. But the carbon […]
Soaking up the sun: Artificial photosynthesis promises clean, sustainable source of energy
Humans can do lots of things that plants can’t do. We can walk around, we can talk, we can hear and see and touch. But plants have one major advantage over humans: They can make energy directly from the sun. That process of turning sunlight directly into usable energy — called photosynthesis — may soon […]
Biodiversity loss in plants worldwide
When alien plants integrate into an existing ecosystem and successfully spread there, in rare cases this can contribute to the increased uniqueness of the regional flora. However, much more often this process — known as “naturalization” — leads to a homogenization of regional floras and thus to a net loss of global floristic uniqueness. Especially […]
Yeast and bacteria together biosynthesize plant hormones for weed control: Synthetic strigolactones could also improve nutrient uptake in crops
Plants regulate their growth and development using hormones, including a group called strigolactones that prevent excessive budding and branching. For the first time, scientists led by UC Riverside have synthesized strigolactones from microbes. The work is published in the open-access journal, Science Advances. Strigolactones also help plant roots form symbiotic relationships with microorganisms that allow […]