but with a mechanism they had never been able to observe according to Dr. Hays Rye Texas A&m Agrilife Research biochemist.
and how they interact with each other in a complicated network said Rye who also is associate professor of biochemistry and biophysics at Texas A&m.
Rye explained that individual amino acids get linked together like beads on a string as a protein is made in the cell.
Rye said researchers have been trying to understand this process for more than 50 years but in a living cell the process is complicated by the presence of many proteins in a concentrated environment.
and just sort of buzz along inside a cell driving a protein folding reaction every few seconds Rye said.
They are bound together like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle Rye explained. And the proteins--those little beads on the string that are designed to fold up like origami--are folded to position all these beads in three-dimensional space to perfectly wrap around those molecules
or folds incorrectly it turns into an aggregate which Rye described as white goo that looks kind of like a mayonnaise like crud in the test tube.
Rye's team focused on a key molecular chaperone--the HSP60. They're called HSP for'heat shock protein
and unfold Rye said. The cell is built to respond by making more of the chaperones to try
and literally puts it inside a little'box'Rye said. He added that the mystery had long been how the folding worked
Rye and the team zeroed in on a chemically modified mutant that in other experiments had seemed to stall at an important step in the process that the machine goes through to start the folding action.
and view a structure as a three-dimensional model Rye said. What the team saw was this:
Rye collaborated on the research with Dong-Hua Chen and Wah Chiu at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston Damian Madan and Zohn Lin at Princeton university Jeremy Weaver at Texas A&m
and increase tree survival after wildfire as well as provide a seed source for future trees Dodson said.
During these timber salvage operations crews are building roads and moving a lot of soil and seed.
The older seed-producing trees were often found upwind from the sites of the recent ailanthus growth.
Pistil leads pollen in life -and-death dancepollination essential to much of life on earth requires the explosive death of the male pollen tube in the female ovule.
In new research Brown University scientists describe the genetic and regulatory factors that compel the male's role in the process.
In this dance the female pistil leads the male pollen tubes follow and at the finish the tubes explode and die.
In normal pollination sperm-carrying pollen grains land on the pistil's tip or stigma and grow tubes down its style to reach the ovaries in the ovules at the pistil's base.
Once the tubes reach their destination they burst open and release their sperm to fertilize each of the two ovaries in every ovule.
Last year for instance Johnson and his research group showed how for all the hundreds of pollen tubes that grow through the pistil each ovule receives exactly two fertile sperm.
The moves in the dance between the pollen and the pistil are a back -and-forth of signals as the pollen tube is growing.
It's quite a dynamic system that happens over the course of a few hours. Making the male listenin the new paper Johnson's group led by third-year graduate student Alexander Leydon sought to discover what convinces the male pollen tubes to stop growing
and burst when they reach the ovule. Scientists have begun to understand the female's commands
What they knew from a prior study is that the gene expression in pollen tubes that had grown through a pistil was much different than that of pollen tubes grown in the lab. Leydon's first step
or transcription factors were at work in pistil-grown pollen tubes but not in the lab-grown ones.
and found under the microscope that these transcription factors accumulated in the nuclei of the pollen tubes as they grew in the pistil.
The pollen tubes from all three plants reliably made it to ovules but in 70 percent of the ovules encountered by the triple mutants the pollen tubes didn't stop growing and then burst.
Instead they kept growing coiling and remaining intact. The pollen tube gets to the right place
which you'd think is the hardest part Johnson said. But once it gets there it's unable to hear the message from the female to stop growing and burst.
which pollen tube-expressed genes were being regulated by the MYB transcription factors. In pollen tubes that had grown through pistils they found 11 that were grossly underexpressed in the mutated pollen tubes compared to normal ones.
Finally they looked at what those genes do. They encode a variety of tasks but one in particular got Leydon's attention
In other words expressing that gene could be pushing the pollen tube's self-destruct mechanism. This is not just a dialogue
and determining whether thionin is indeed the pollen tube buster that the genes and their MYB-related expression seem to indicate.
but fertilization often fails at the pollen tube burst -and-release step. Among crop plants pollination means food.
They develop gastrointestinal and other symptoms from eating wheat barley rye and other grains that contain gluten-related proteins.
or glabrous canary seed which lacks the tiny hairs of the seed traditionally produced as food for caged birds.
The second experiment involved obtaining seed sources internationally through the USDA including seeds from Afghanistan Uzbekistan and Iran.
Seeds were taken also from the site of a remediated quarry area in Vermillion County where they found native black locust growing.
The seeds and seedlings for the two new evaluations were treated in greenhouses over the winter
if it's mowed the stiltgrass will just produce seeds on tiny little plants. It's better to wait until the grass matures a little--not to the point where it's actually making seeds
but just before that stage--and then pull it up by the roots. On the other hand Snetselaar notes pulling up Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica) a notorious invader isn't recommended
and published today in the Journal of Ecology suggest that as pine stands are fragmented increasingly by widespread tree death surviving trees may be hindered in their ability to produce their usually abundant seeds.
With fewer seeds you get less regeneration says ecologist Joshua Rapp affiliated with NSF's Harvard Forest Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) site
Whitebark pine populations vary between producing a high number of seed cones some years and a low number of seed cones other years.
male pollen cones female seed cones wind and proximity. Each year pollen from male cones is carried on the air to fertilize female seed cones perched atop nearby trees.
In low-cone years less pollen is released reaching extremely few female cones says Elizabeth Crone senior ecologist at the NSF Harvard Forest LTER site
In isolated pockets of trees the gene pool is diminished also meaning the seeds produced may be less viable over time.
By combining field data on seed and pollen production for whitebark pines with models that simulate mature cone production this study helps to answer that question for these pines.
They inspected branches from seven whitebark pine sites in western Montana counting the scars left by pollen cones and seed cones.
All the years with a high number of seed cones had one thing in common: a high number of pollen cones says Rapp.
The success of the seeds seems to depend on the amount of pollen produced. Whitebark pine seeds are an essential food source for many animals in mountain habitats.
The Clark's nutcracker a mountain bird can store up to 100000 seeds in underground caches each year. Squirrels also store thousands of seeds underground.
A diminished number of seed cones has an effect on grizzly bears the scientists say; the bears regularly raid squirrel seed caches to prepare for winter hibernation.
In the past low years for whitebark pine cones have led to six times more conflicts between grizzlies and humans as hungry bears look for food in campgrounds says Crone.
Now concerns about viability of whitebark pine populations are one of the main reasons grizzly bears in Yellowstone national park are listed still as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
Masses of several thousand domesticated grape seeds pedicels and even skin excavated from an earlier context near the press further attest to its use for crushing transplanted domesticated grapes and local wine production.
The isotope method cannot distinguish what parts of grasses and sedges human ancestors ate--leaves stems seeds and-or underground storage organs such as roots or rhizomes.
C4 plants are warm-season or tropical grasses and sedges and their seeds leaves or storage organs like roots and tubers.
Today North americans eat about half C3 plants including vegetables fruits and grains such as wheat oats rye and barley and about half C4
#Human activity echoes through Brazilian rainforestthe disappearance of large fruit-eating birds from tropical forests in Brazil has caused the region's forest palms to produce smaller less successful seeds over the past century researchers say.
They collected more than 9000 seeds from 22 different Euterpe edulis palm populations and used a combination of statistics genetics
and evolutionary models to determine that the absence of large seed-dispersing birds in the area was the main reason for the observed decrease in the palm's seed size.
Galetti and the other researchers found that palms produced significantly smaller seeds in patches of forest that had been fragmented by coffee
and palms continue to produce large seeds successfully dispersed by the birds they say. Small seeds are more vulnerable to desiccation
and cannot withstand projected climate change explained Galetti. But small-gaped birds such as thrushes that populate the fragmented patches of forest are unable to swallow
and disperse large seeds. As a result of this impaired dispersal palm regeneration became less successful in the area with less-vigorous seedlings germinating from smaller seeds.
The researchers considered the influence of a wide range of environmental factors such as climate soil fertility
They performed genetic analyses to determine that the shrinkage of seeds among forest palms in the region could have taken place within 100 years of an initial disturbance.
and displaced many large bird populations in the region triggered a rapid evolution of forest palms that resulted in smaller less successful seeds.
Long periods of drought and increasingly warmer climate (as predicted by climate model projections for South america) could be particularly harmful to tropical tree populations that depend on animals to disperse their seeds.
wheat maize rice barley rye millet sorghum soybean sunflower potato cassava sugarcane sugar beet oil palm rapeseed (canola) and groundnut (peanut.
To counteract this problem producers have included saturated fats such as corn germ beef tallow palm kernel oil and glycerol in diets containing DDGS
For this study corn germ beef tallow palm kernel oil and glycerol were added each to a diet containing DDGS.
which suggests the human role in transporting pathogens to new locations such as the international seed trade is a major factor.
when the seeds needed could be collected. The genes that have been identified now indicate when mass flowering is about to happen.
In Switzerland the Federal office for Agriculture (FOAG) has followed suit suspending the authorizations of three insecticides used on oilseed rape and maize fields.
Generally Gray said forest managers should consider using seed from more southern climates or lower elevation environments.
The seed should still be of the same tree species rather than introducing a new species into a foreign environment she added.
Foresters in British columbia have started using the study's results as one of the tools to aid assisted seed migration strategies Gray noted.
#New non-GM technology platform for genetic improvement of sunflower oilseed cropscientists have developed techniques for the genetic improvement of sunflowers using a non-GMO based approach.
which will improve its role as an important oilseed crop. The work was led by Dr Manash Chatterjee an Adjunct Faculty member of Botany
Among oilseed crops sunflowers are one of the most important sources of edible vegetable oil for human consumption worldwide.
Sunflower and other oilseed crops are the source of the vast majority of vegetable oil used for cooking and food processing.
Seeds Argentina. NUI Galway Phd student Anish PK Kumar has been working on the technology platform development as a component of his Phd research studies.
Its seeds can survive up to 1300 years its petals and leaves repel grime and water and its flowers generate heat to attract pollinators.
and biology professor at the University of California at Los angeles (who germinated a 1300-year-old sacred lotus seed);
Even when other known means of communication such as contact chemical and light-mediated signals are blocked chilli seeds grow better when grown with basil plants.
Monica Gagliano and Michael Renton from the University of Western australia attempted to grow chilli seeds (Capsicum annuum) in the presence or absence of other chilli plants or basil (Ocimum basilicum.
but when the plants were able to openly communicate with the seeds more seedlings grew.
However when the seeds were separated from the basil plants with black plastic so that they could not be influenced by either light
A partial response was seen for fully grown chilli plants blocked from known communication with the seeds.
Dr Gagliano explained Our results show that plants are able to positively influence growth of seeds by some as yet unknown mechanism.
while taking supplements containing the antioxidant polyphenol from fish oil grape seed extract and vitamins. Antioxidants are thought to slow cell aging.
Sherrier and Bais who received a 2012 seed grant for the project from Delaware's National Science Foundation Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCOR) ultimately want to determine how UD1023 slows arsenic movement into rice roots
Coating seeds with bacteria is very easy. With this bacteria you could implement easy low-cost strategies that farmers could use that would reduce arsenic in the human food chain.
and other habitats as a seed predator and disperser and it is a favorite prey of jaguars and pumas.
How burning plants tell seeds to rise from the ashesin the spring following a forest fire trees that survived the blaze explode in new growth
What we discovered she says is how a dying plant generates a chemical message for the next generation telling dormant seeds it's time to sprout.
First the researchers determined the structure of a plant protein know as KAI2 which binds to karrikin in dormant seeds.
Then comparing the karrikin-bound KAI2 protein to the structure of an unbound KAI2 protein allowed the researchers to speculate how KAI2 allows a seed to perceive karrikin in its environment.
and plant geneticist Zuyu Zheng says this karrikin-induced shape change may send a new signal to other proteins in the seeds.
U s. wild relatives of the world's most important food crops--including strawberry sunflower sweet potato bean stone fruits
and then identify the priority places for collecting seed from species that haven't yet been secured.
Hopefully we'll find some weed seeds as they may help confirm that fertilisers were used indeed
The team tested a wide variety of sources of biomass--leaves stems flowers seeds and legumes--with particular interest in those with high protein content
or less to water seeds of peas beans and wheat on a weekly basis. Treating the seeds less often reduced the effect
With wheat all the seeds germinated in one to two days instead of four or five and with peas and beans the typical 40 percent rate of germination rose to 60 to 70 percent.
It belongs to a more unusual group of dicotyledons (plants with two seed leaves) known as magnoliids
#Seeds of model cereal plant now availableseeds of the model cereal plant Brachypodium distachyon are now available at the RIKEN Bioresource Center (BRC) in Japan the second bioresource facility to provide seeds
The seeds made available at BRC are of the Bd21 line the standard line used in the sequencing project.
In addition to the seeds BRC will provide the scientific community with the technology needed for the cultivation and genetic alteration of Bd21.
The BRC Brachypodium distachyon seed bank is the first of the kind in Asia. Our Bd21 seeds will be of particular interest to Asian scientists who can use it to generate transgenic plants
Her discoveries will be shared with seed companies so they can transfer the traits into their varieties.
Berkebile has uncovered many examples of other plant life the Puebloans might have used as a food source such as purslane pinyon nut juniper berries globemallow and even cactus.
Examples at MU 125 include pinyon nut juniper berries and cactus. -Domesticated resources: These are brought plants to the Southwest by humans
and grow to maturity under high temperatures said the study's lead author Kent Bradford a professor of plant sciences and director of the UC Davis Seed Biotechnology Center.
And because this mechanism that inhibits hot-weather germination in lettuce seeds appears to be quite common in many plant species we suspect that other crops also could be modified to improve their germination he said.
Most lettuce varieties flower in spring or early summer and then drop their seeds--a trait that is likely linked to their origin in the Mediterranean region
Scientists have observed for years that a built-in dormancy mechanism seems to prevent lettuce seeds from germinating under conditions that would be too hot and dry to sustain growth.
In the California and Arizona lettuce industries lettuce seeds are planted somewhere every day of the year--even in September in the Imperial Valley of California
or priming the seeds to germinate by presoaking them at cool temperatures and redrying them before planting--methods that are expensive and not always successful.
In the new study researchers turned to lettuce genetics to better understand the temperature-related mechanisms governing seed germination.
They identified a region of chromosome six in a wild ancestor of commercial lettuce varieties that enables seeds to germinate in warm temperatures.
Further genetic mapping studies zeroed in on a specific gene that governs production of a plant hormone called abscisic acid--known to inhibit seed germination.
when the seed is exposed to moisture at warm temperatures increasing production of abscisic acid. In the wild ancestor that the researchers were studying
and the seeds can still germinate. The researchers then demonstrated that they could either silence or mutate the germination-inhibiting gene in cultivated lettuce varieties
and acting as a vital part of the life cycle of many plant species through their role as seed dispersers.
In corn however Hollick's lab had discovered previously that the absence of Pol IV creates clear problems in the plants such as growing seeds in the tassel.
Since we knew the misplaced tassel-seed trait was due to misexpression of a gene we hypothesized that this pigment trait might be due to a pigment regulator being expressed in a tissue where it normally is expressed never.
So it's possible that the displacement of A. picea may affect the spread of seeds produced by early spring ephemerals said Warren. By comparing data collected in 1974 to current data Warren
The absence of A. picea may affect the spread of seeds produced by early-flowering woodland plants.
The decline in the number of primates causes a reduction in the dispersal of seed by the primates and this leads to a reduction in the numbers of important fruit trees and changes to the rainforest.
Both apes and small monkeys play an important role in seed dispersal in the rainforest as they feed on a variety of different fruits.
as a result of hunting their seed spreading role also declines. If fewer fruit seeds are spread fewer fruit trees will grow in the forests.
Instead species with wind-dispersed seeds will most likely take over. Ola Olsson stressed that the present study does not give any definite answers to how the composition of the forests could change
but in his view there could well be an increase in bushes and lianas. This would also have negative consequences for the local population.
Union College Biology Professor Steve Horton likens this mostly underground portion of fungi (the mushrooms that pop up are the reproductive structures) to a tiny biological chain of tubular cells.
#Earliest tobacco use in Pacific Northwest discoverednative American hunter-gatherers living more than a thousand years ago in what is now northwestern California ate salmon acorns
pumpkins melon cucumber watermelon bottle gourds and bitter gourd. Molecular data have revealed recently that both cucumber (Cucumis sativus L)
The most species-rich genera are Trichosanthes with 22 species Cucumis with 11 (all but two wild) and the bitter gourd Genus momordica with eight.
Fox and Cruzan note The seed and genomic resources are publicly available so it would be relatively easy for any research group to establish a research program focused on slender false brome.
and form part of the protective coating on seeds. Phytoliths vary in appearance under a microscope depending on the kind of plant.
and at worst can clog up pistils preventing fertilization the bee washings also pointed to a decline in pollination services.
and seed crops that make diets interesting such as tomatoes coffee and watermelon is limited because their flowers are pollinated not adequately says Harder.
Flowers of most crops need to receive pollen before making seeds and fruits a process that is enhanced by insects that visit flowers.
i e. to exclude anything that contains wheat rye or barley. Until the 1970s celiac disease was unusual
i e. to exclude anything that contains wheat rye or barley. Until the 1970s celiac disease was unusual
which raw material can be stored as seed. This could be of huge benefit in developing countries where problems with storage can render vaccines useless.
If seed could be transported to local production and extraction facilities the technology could also help boost local economies.
and only supplying seed to farmers specifically contracted to grow PMPS. Dr Sparrow was involved in a collaboration with EU partners to road test the challenges faced by potential investors.
and in some cases off-flavoured fruit with aborted seeds. In areas affected by HLB citrus management costs have increased dramatically in the last few years:
The viruses get passed from plants to their offspring through the seeds. Researchers are still trying to uncover exactly
The cones in which the pinyon seeds are produced are initiated two years prior to seed maturity
Some scientists believe masting events evolved to produce a big surplus of nut-carrying cones--far too many for wildlife species to consume in a season--making it more likely the nuts eventually will sprout into pinyon pine seedlings she said.
when gluten a protein in wheat barley and rye damages the lining of the small intestine causing a variety of symptoms.
but had reached also the plant pods. A detailed spectral analysis of the X-ray signals showed that the cerium in the nodules
and pods was in the same chemical state as in the nanoparticles. However part of the cerium had changed its oxidation state from Ce (IV) to Ce (III) which can alter the chemical reactivity of the nanoparticles.
The researcher selected three winter cover crops often grown in the Salinas Calif. area--rye mustard
and a legume-rye mix --and planted each cover crop using either a typical seeding rate
The legume-rye and rye cover crops produced approximately 25 percent more dry matter biomass than the mustard crops.
But effectively suppressing weeds with the legume-rye crops required seeding at three times the typical rate
while rye and mustard crops appeared to suppress weeds adequately with typical seeding rates. The long-term study also provided Brennan with more data about year-to-year yield variations in the legume-rye mix including why legumes
which make up most of the seed costs are not consistently abundant. Brennan thinks cooler early-season weather helps legumes compete with the rye.
So when a hot and dry autumn is expected producers might want to use a rye cover crop
and skip spending the money on a cover crop with legumes. Brennan who works at the ARS Crop Improvement and Protection Research Unit in Salinas has published some his findings in Agronomy Journal and Applied Soil Ecology.
Read more about this research in the February 2013 issue of Agricultural Research magazine: http://www. ars. usda. gov/is/AR/archive/feb13/organic0213. htmstory Source:
and creative thinking on how to perform genetic manipulations in maize that will have the effect of increasing the number of its seeds--which most of us call kernels.
and ultimately after pollination seeds--will provide more physical space for the development of the structures that mature into kernels.
which each fertilized seed contained two siblings--an embryo and a corresponding bit of tissue known as endosperm that feeds the embryo as the seed grows said CU-Boulder Professor Pamela Diggle.
and behavior of the embryos and endosperm in seeds sharing the same mother and father with the growth and behavior of embryos and endosperm that had genetically different parents.
The results indicated embryos with the same mother and father as the endosperm in their seed weighed significantly more than embryos with the same mother
but a different father said Diggle a faculty member in CU-Boulder's ecology and evolutionary biology department.
We found that endosperm that does not share the same father as the embryo does not hand over as much food--it appears to be acting less cooperatively.
When the endosperm gives all of its food to the embryo and then dies it doesn't get more altruistic than that.
When the two pollen grains come in contact with an individual silk they produce a seed containing an embryo and endosperm.
While the majority of kernels had an endosperm and embryo of the same color--an indication they shared the same mother
Wu was searching for such rare kernels--far less than one in 100--that had two different fathers as a way to assess cooperation between the embryo and endosperm.
Endosperm--in the form of corn rice wheat and other crops--is critical to humans providing about 70 percent of calories we consume annually worldwide.
The tissue in the seeds of flowering plants is what feeds the world said Friedman who also directs the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard.
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