Plants
- Life
Genes in wheat relatives help stave off stem rust
Wild and obscure species provide resistance to deadly fungus.
- Plants
Mosses frozen in time come back to life
Buried under a glacier for hundreds of years, plants regrow in the lab.
- Plants
Giant genomes felled by DNA sequencing advances
Complete genetic blueprints have been collected for several conifer species.
- Animals
Native pollinators boost crop yields worldwide
Farms with crops from coffee to mangoes don’t get the best yields if they rely solely on honeybees.
- Plants
The Man Who Planted Trees
Lost Groves, Champion Trees, and an Urgent Plan to Save the Planet by Jim Robbins
- Genetics
Poppies make more than opium
A 10-gene cluster controls the flowers’ production of a valuable cough suppressant and antitumor compound.
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- Humans
Bt: The lesson not learned
The more things change, the more they stay the same, as a Dec. 29 Associated Press report on genetically engineered corn notes. Like déjà vu, this news story on emerging resistance to Bt toxin — a fabulously effective and popular insecticide to protect corn — brings to mind articles I encountered over the weekend while flipping through historic issues of Science News. More than a half-century ago, our magazine chronicled, real time, the emergence of resistance to DDT, the golden child of pest controllers worldwide. Now much the same thing is happening again with Bt, its contemporary agricultural counterpart. Will we never learn?
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- Tech
Fishy fat from soy is headed for U.S. dinner tables
Most people have heard about omega-3 fatty acids, the primary constituents of fish oil. Stearidonic acid, one of those omega-3s, is hardly a household term. But it should become one, researchers argued this week at the 2011 Experimental Biology meeting.
- Plants
From a mismatch in growth, a flower blooms
Scientists reveal the forces at work in the blossoming of a lily.
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