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Simple Things #6
Reading Time: 2 minutes In which we use Randall Munroe’s ‘simple writer‘ to explain plant-and-pipette topics. Can you guess what they are? Monroe’s ‘simple writer’ limits language use to only the 10 hundred most common words in the English language. So the word ‘chloroplast’ is out. But so is ‘duck’, ‘cuddle’, and ‘explosion’. We’ve tried to define a plant […]
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CRISPR fought the law and the law won
Reading Time: 5 minutes CRISPR/Cas9 wows plant researchers and fascinates plant breeders. The public however doesn’t necessarily feel the same warm glow – public response has been mixed at best. Why is that?
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Tree enemies are diversity’s friend
Reading Time: 5 minutes How many different plants can coexist in one environment? It’s a question that I ask myself every time I walk past a plant shop and contemplate buying yet another Monstera-like cousin for my increasingly overcrowded flat. But it’s also a question that scientists have been asking for many years when discussing dauntingly diverse tropical forest […]
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Simple Things #5
Reading Time: 2 minutes In which we use Randall Munroe’s ‘simple writer‘ to explain plant-and-pipette topics. Can you guess what they are? Monroe’s ‘simple writer’ limits language use to only the 10 hundred most common words in the English language. So the word ‘chloroplast’ is out. But so is ‘duck’, ‘cuddle’, and ‘explosion’. We’ve tried to define a plant […]
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CRISPR/Cas9 – a shortcut to better plants?
Reading Time: 5 minutes HiScientists across the globe are excited about CRISPR/Cas9 and the possibilities the new method brings to research. And they’re not alone: plant breeders are eyeballing the tool as well. What makes CRISPR/Cas9 so special in comparison to traditional breeding?
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Spitting in the eye of plant defences
Reading Time: 3 minutes Unlike animals, plants can’t make a run for it when attacked by predators: they have to stand and fight. And fight they do, with a variety of defences designed to prevent themselves from becoming food. But of course, in the evolutionary tug-of-war of nature, the predators themselves have developed specialised weapons to surmount these blockades. […]
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Simple Things #4
Reading Time: < 1 minutes In which we use Randall Munroe’s ‘simple writer‘ to explain plant-and-pipette topics. Can you guess what they are? Monroe’s ‘simple writer’ limits language use to only the 10 hundred most common words in the English language. So the word ‘chloroplast’ is out. But so is ‘duck’, ‘cuddle’, and ‘explosion’. We’ve tried to define a plant […]
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Here to stay – the CRISPR/Cas9 system
Reading Time: 4 minutes Very few scientific methods manage to jump from the world of molecular research into popular knowledge. Detectives on TV put a swab from a crime scene into a DNA sequencer and – bingo! – the culprit is found. On the next channel, in a disastrous case of ‘genetic engineering gone wrong’, a monster roams New […]
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Meet the lab rats of the plant world
Reading Time: 3 minutes When studying human disease or development, scientists usually don’t start experiments directly with good old Homo sapiens, but instead begin their quest using cell lines, fruit flies, or even mice. In the plant field things are similar. And although our model organisms aren’t quite as fluffy as your standard ‘lab rat’, the come with a whole lot of benefits.
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Simple Things #3
Reading Time: < 1 minutes This little living machine is found inside of almost all green living things. When you look close, it looks like a tiny bag of water that is filled with tiny living machines. These machines have helpers to gather sun light and they look green. So, the entire tiny bag of water looks green to us….
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Rubber tree
Reading Time: 2 minutes
Honestly, I chose to write about the rubber tree (a.k.a Ficus elastica) for our first ‘my favourite plant’ segment, because I have a huge one in my flat, looming dramatically over my bed.
But I actually followed through on that thought because of Living Root Bridges. Which just look friggin’ cool.
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mRNA- going the (long) distance
Reading Time: 4 minutes Inside billions of cells all around us, DNA quietly makes messenger RNA (mRNA), which in turn acts as the template for protein synthesis. In this equation, mRNA is the boring middle man. Unlike DNA, its lifetime is short, and it doesn’t get passed to the next generation. It also doesn’t get the protein life- catalyzing […]
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Simple things #2
Reading Time: < 1 minutes In which we use Randall Munroe’s ‘simple writer‘ to explain plant-and-pipette topics. Can you guess what they are? Monroe’s ‘simple writer’ limits language use to only the 10 hundred most common words in the English language. So the word ‘chloroplast’ is out. But so is ‘duck’, ‘cuddle’, and ‘explosion’. We’ve tried to define a plant […]
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China grows plants on the moon!
Reading Time: 2 minutes Back on January 3rd 2019, China managed to land on the ‘dark side’ of the moon. Even as someone who is not super into space, I can admit that this event was objectively cool. But generally, the largest significance it had on life is that I couldn’t get Pink Floyd out of my head for […]
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Simple things #1
Reading Time: < 1 minutes In which we use Randall Munroe’s ‘simple writer‘ to explain plant-and-pipette topics. Can you guess what they are?
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In the Beginning there was…
Reading Time: 2 minutes What you think happened in the beginning might depend a bit on your perspective. In the beginning, many would say, there was the Big Bang. But, in case the title of our new blog hasn’t given it away, we’re not physicists, and we’re much more interested in the beginning of the planet of the plants. […]