Life Sciences and Chemistry

Scientists at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research at Cornell University have uncovered the genes that enable plants to interact with beneficial soil dwelling fungi and to access phosphate delivered to the roots by these fungi — a first step, they say, toward enhancing the beneficial relationship for crop plants , while reducing fertilizer use and phosphate pollution in the environment.

Discovery of the phosphate-transport genes was announced today (July 28, 2004) by Maria Har

When a Kopi Luwak coffee bean, the world’s most expensive coffee, comes out the other end of a large cat after it’s been eaten by the animal – called a civet or Luwak – the micro-structural properties of the beans are altered, according to new research by a University of Guelph scientist published in Food Research International.

They’re harder, more brittle and darker in colour than the same type of bean that hasn’t been eaten and digested by the three- to 10-pound tree-climbing animal foun

E. coli, the bug made famous by food poisoning outbreaks, can be used to point the finger of blame at the right culprit when our waterways become polluted. E. coli live in the guts of animals and are already used to indicate whether food and water are contaminated with faecal material. However, according to a recent article in the August 2004 issue of Microbiology Today, the quarterly magazine of the Society for General Microbiology, this work can be extended to use the bugs to detect and find the s

Eradicating deadly E. coli O157:H7 from the bottoms of cows may prevent future outbreaks of food poisoning by this famous bug. According to an article in the August 2004 issue Microbiology Today, the quarterly magazine of the Society for General Microbiology, the majority of people with E. coli O157:H7, picked up the infection from cattle, either through direct contact with faeces or by consuming contaminated meat or milk.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh, in collaboration with the

Taking something of a back-to-the-future approach, biologists from Boston University have looked into the past to find that flowering plants growing today blossom more than a week earlier than a century ago. Their findings, being presented at the Society for Conservation Biology’s annual meeting in New York City July 30 – August 2, show that among the plants studied in Boston’s Arnold Arboretum, flowering times have moved forward over the decades, with the plants flowering eight days earl

A stroke leaves a permanent gap in the brain that can destroy a person’s ability to speak and move normally. Filling that gap with new cells has been a long sought-after goal of stem cell research, but all attempts have met with complications – until now. Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine report the first success using stem cells to populate the damaged region with new neurons in rats. If those cells also replace the function of the lost cells, they could help people recover