Arabidopsis thaliana, or thale cress as it is commonly known, made history back in 2000 by becoming the first plant to have its entire genetic code read by scientists, contributing to what is often referred to as biology's version of the book of life

Dr Saskia Hogenhout has been awarded the Derrick Edward Award for outstanding research by a young investigator by the International Organization for Mycoplasmology, for her outstanding research in the field of mycoplasmology

For organisms to grow and develop, they must produce tissues with distinct functions, each one made up of similar cells

Streptomyces produce the majority of clinically useful antibiotics, yet we don’t fully understand how they grow

The flush of flowering of poppies in a field makes the point very visually – the control of flowering time is a tightly regulated process

A new technique will allow plant breeders to introduce valuable crop traits even without access to the full genome sequence of that crop

Many plant and animal pathogens deploy effector proteins as part of their ‘molecular arsenal’ to facilitate infection and colonisation of their hosts. New research has revealed the structure of a bacterial effector molecule bound to its target protein in the host

Dr Saskia Hogenhout, in collaboration with the Dr Eduardo Bejarano from the University of Malaga (Spain) and Dr Ian Bedford, will pursue an innovative global health and development research project

A new centre of excellence for plant and microbial research is planned in China following a joint symposium in Shanghai between researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the John Innes Centre