Category: articles
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Short Chain Hero
It’s grey and rainy days like this November in Berlin that make you very aware of your immune system and how it works, perhaps not always successfully, to fends off all kinds of pathogens. Plants are in a similar situation, their immune response has to constantly be ready to fight off fungi, bacteria or viruses. Recently, researchers gained new understanding of the workings of a key part of the plant’s immune response.… Read more
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Healing Herbs II – Artemisinin
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects hundreds of millions of people each year, and kills over 500,000. Worldwide, the chosen treatment for malaria is artemisinin combination therapy (ACT), a medicine that relies on the drug artemisinin that happens to come from a plant…… Read more
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Bacteriocins waging war in the Bacteria Battlegrounds
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Healing Herbs I – Paclitaxel
We’ve sung their praises before, and we’ll do it again: plants make the oxygen we breathe, the food we eat, the fibres that form our clothing, our fuel, and our shelters. Plus they’re just so darn pretty. But one of the things we mention perhaps less often, is that these glorious greens are not only there for us in the good times, they’ve also got us covered in the bad. Today we’re starting a new series, where we discuss some of the amazing (scientifically supported) medicines that have been developed from planty products.… Read more
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Taming a Virus
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Adjusting Antennas
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Room for biodiversity
Heading into the future, we have to solve some extremely complex problems. Take agriculture for example: we want to feed an ever increasing population, protect the local environment, reduce carbon emissions and have a sustainable long-term production pipeline.
Today, we’re looking at one of these problems and discussing potential solutions.… Read more
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Raindrops keep falling on my leaf 😢
The outside world can be harsh – and I’m not only saying that because I am sitting at home with a cold, looking at the dull grey sky through the window. Too much of any of the elements- wind, rain, cold, heat- can cause us all stress. And they can stress plants, too. Today we’re talking about how plants feel when raindrops keep falling on their leaves…
drip
drip
drip… Read more
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The Spooookiest Plant Genes
Welcome to the Spooky Season!
Earlier in the week we shared a list of the scariest plants, including some that are dangerous, some that are deadly, and some that just have really cool names and backstories.
Today, we’re talking about our favourite plant genes, proteins and mutants with sufficiently spooooky names.
Let us know in the comments if you think we’ve missed any!… Read more
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Our 11 Scariest Plants
Welcome to Halloween Week!
We thought we could stick to the spoooky theme this week, and present our favourite scary plants. Just as a disclaimer – we are well aware of (and a little bit sad about) the fact that some people will hear ‘scary plant’ and immediately thing ‘GMO’. But that’s not at all what this is about.
Instead, we’re focusing on the devious, the dangerous, and the deadly… a well as a couple of plants that just plain old smell like dung.… Read more