Genetics & Molecular Biology
The "green seed problem" is a long-standing issue that causes millions of dollars annually in canola crop losses for Canada.
Canola is the major cash crop in Alberta, which produces about 35 per cent of Canada's canola that generates in the province about $5 billion in revenue annually. Across the country, the oilseed crop, whose seeds are pressed into canola oil, contributes about $15 billion a year to the Canadian economy.
However, every year around the time when canola matures, an unpredictable touch of a light frost can damage crop quality and cause severe losses. The discovery…
Telomerase is an enzyme that is the hallmark of both aging and the uncontrolled cell division associated with cancer and in an effort to understand and control telomerase activity, researchers at The Wistar Institute have discovered a protein "motif," named TFLY, which is crucial to the function of telomerase.
Altering this motif disrupts telomerase function, they found, a fact that they believe will help them in their efforts to identify inhibitors of telomerase with potential cancer therapeutic properties.
Telomerase is an enzyme that replicates the ends of chromosomes (sections of…
It often takes several weeks to feel the effect of newly prescribed antidepressants - a lingering mystery and a frustration to both patients and physicians.
CREB, and CREM to some degree, has been implicated in the pathophysiology of depression, as well as in the efficacy of antidepressants. However, whenever CREB is deleted, CREM is upregulated, further complicating the story.
Therefore, how an antidepressant works on the biochemistry and behavior in a mouse in which the CREB protein is deleted only in the hippocampus versus a wild type mouse in which CREM is overexpressed let the…
The evolution of similar traits in different species, a process known as convergent evolution, is widespread not only at the physical level, but also at the genetic level, and scientists who investigated the genomic basis for echolocation, one of the most well-known examples of convergent evolution, sought to examine the frequency of the process at a genomic level.
Echolocation is a complex physical trait that involves the production, reception and auditory processing of ultrasonic pulses for detecting unseen obstacles or tracking down prey, and has evolved separately in different…
The mid to late 1800s was a very difficult time for the European wine grape industry. New pests associated with native North American grape species made their way to the "Old World" because of transport between the continents. I recently wrote about how a fungal disease called downy mildew nearly destroyed the industry until it was saved by the accidental discovery of an effective chemical fungicide.
In today's post I'm going to talk about an insect pest that was introduced to Europe in the same era. It was a a root feeding relative of aphid …
A neuropeptide named natalisin regulates the sexual activity and reproductive ability of insects, according to a new study in which the neuropeptide is observed and named Natalisin is composed of short chains of amino acids in the brain of insects and arthropods and the finding may open new possibilities for environmentally friendly pest management.
The study looked at natalisin in Drosophila melanogaster, Bombyx mori and Tribolium castaneum - fruit flies, red flour beetles and silk moths - to understand the patterns of natalisin expression and to assess the phenotype of natalisin RNAi. These…
Since man discovered agriculture, farmers have used ingenious ways to pump more nitrogen into crop fields; farmers have planted legumes and plowed the entire crop under, strewn night soil or manure on the fields, shipped in bat dung from islands in the Pacific or saltpeter from Chilean mines and plowed in glistening granules of synthetic fertilizer made in chemical plants.
A new Washington University in St. Louis project seeks to miniaturize, automate and relocate the chemical apparatus for nitrogen fixation within the plant so nitrogen is available when and where it is…
A study shows for the first time that chromosomes rearrangements (such as inversions or translocations) can provide advantages to the cells that harbor them, depending on the environment they are exposed.
Chromosomal rearrangements consist in parts of a chromosome being relocated to another region of the same chromosome or to a different one. These mutations are commonly found in cancer cells, but also exist in individuals that do not present any known disease. Until now it was unknown the impact that chromosomal rearrangements have in the fitness of an organism, i.e. in its ability to…
TERC, a gene which regulates the length of the telomere 'caps' on the ends of DNA and helps control the aging process by acting as a cell's internal clock, has been linked to cancer by a new study.
Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, found a genetic variant that influences the aging process among four new variants they linked to myeloma, one of the most common types of blood cancer. The study more than doubles the number of genetic variants linked to myeloma, bringing the total number to seven, and sheds important new light on the genetic causes of the disease. …
An interesting issue came up through my volunteer work for the new website, "GMOAnswers.com". Apparently some pot users are concerned that they might be unwittingly consuming what they consider to be a dreaded "GMO."
The irony is that while marijuana has definitely been "genetically modified" to contain higher levels of THC, that change didn't involve the tools of modern biotechnology.
Instead, the changes were achieved using rather clumsy methods from the past.
New plant varieties have often been based on chance mutations in their DNA. For instance the sweet…