Excellence in plant and microbial science
You may not have heard of geosmin but, wherever you may be on this planet, it is highly likely that you’d recognise its smell. New research by scientists in Sweden and the UK has helped to explain why it exists
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For billions of years life on Earth was restricted to aquatic environments, the oceans, seas, rivers and lakes. Then 450 million years ago the first plants colonised land, evolving in the process multiple types of beneficial relationships with microbes in the soil
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Researchers have solved the long-standing mystery of how plants control the arrangement of their cellulose fibres to grow, support themselves and store fixed carbon from the atmosphere
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In many plants the timing of flowering is controlled by a range of environmental and molecular signals. One of these signals, prolonged cold, aligns flowering with spring in a process known as vernalization
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A new study using the model species Streptomyces venezuelae has shown that c-di-GMP intervenes later in development to control the differentiation of the reproductive hyphae into spores
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The secret recipe nature uses to make the diverse leaf shapes we see everywhere around us has been revealed in research
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It is understood that a process called Liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) plays an important role in the formation of membraneless organelles, but how is this important process regulated?
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A study by researchers at the John Innes Centre has discovered that calcium plays a key role in primary root development
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The team used a combination of 3D imaging, cell and clonal analysis and computational modelling to understand how carnivorous plant traps are shaped, showing how Utricularia gibba traps grow from a near spherical ball of cells into a mature trap capable of capturing prey
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