NERC - Plants use underground networks to warn of enemy attack 10 May 2013 Plants use underground fungal networks to warn their neighbours of aphid attack, UK scientists have discovered. The study, published this week in Ecology Letters , is the first to reveal plants' ability to communicate underground in this way. The research, funded by a NERC studentship with Rothamsted Research, changes our understanding of the ways in which living things interact with one another. Scientists from the University of Aberdeen, the James Hutton Institute and Rothamsted Research grew the bean plant ( Vicia faba ) in groups of five. They then infested one of the plants in each group with aphids, triggering the release of a suite of chemicals designed to repel aphids but attract wasps, one of the aphid's predators. Remarkably, plants which were not under attack themselves, but which were connected to the victim by the underground fungal network, also began to produce the defensive chemical response. Dr David Johnson, of the University of Aberdeen, led the study. Notes
Move over elephants: Mimosas have memories too Not long after publishing a paper in a prestigious journal about plants being able to 'talk' using sound, Monica Gagliano is back with her new findings showing that they can 'learn'. While this may sound stranger than fiction, Dr Gagliano, an Australian Research Council research fellow at The University of Western Australia's Centre for Evolutionary Biology, has solid evidence to support her theories, the latest of which is published in Oecologia. Her work is becoming famous, with a recent mention by Michael Pollan in the New Yorker. Her new article - written with Associate Professor Michael Renton and Dr Martial Depczynski from UWA's School of Plant Biology and Oceans Institute respectively, and Professor Stefano Mancuso at the University of Florence in Italy - is titled "Experience teaches plants to learn faster and forget slower in environments where it matters". Explore further: Get touchy feely with plants
Fungus Is The Internet Of The Plant World Fungus. Even the word itself feels like fungus. Slimy. Dirty. But it does appear we’ve all underestimated fungus and our beloved plants at the same time. Scientists discovered this by setting up a test with bean plants. Remarkably, plants which were not under attack themselves, but which were connected to the victim by the underground fungal network, also began to produce the defensive chemical response. He’s not exaggerating: Such symbiotic fungi colonize the roots of most plant systems, meaning this research could have impacts for the entire plant world (including those we eat, of course). Read more here and here. [Hat tip: @ejacqui] [IMAGE: via Shutterstock]
Sci-Tech / Science : Hedge your bet, plants “talk” The Hindu A cabbage plantation at a village in A.P.'s Visakhapatnam district. According to scientists at Britain's Exeter University, a cabbage was “heard” warning its neighbours of trouble ahead after it had a leaf snipped with scissors. Prince Charles has long been mocked for claiming that plants could talk but now he can afford to have the last laugh as researchers say that it is indeed true. According to scientists at Britain's Exeter University, a cabbage was “heard'' warning its neighbours of trouble ahead after it had a leaf snipped with scissors. “By adding the protein luciferase — which makes fireflies glow in the dark — to the DNA the plants' emissions could be monitored on camera. The footage will be the highlight of a forthcoming BBC series on plants by Iain Stewart, professor of Geoscience Communication who saw the experiment at Exeter University.
Birds and the feather did not evolve together “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” Evolutionarily speaking, it’s a yawn of a conundrum. We know it was the egg, which evolved (with shell to enable a terrestrial lifestyle) some 300 million years ago, long before a chicken first clucked across a patch of open ground. In between the origin of the egg and the domestication of the chicken, however, there are plenty of other interesting features to consider. These discoveries have made the question of evolutionary origins even more interesting. A perspective in Science written by University of Texas at Austin paleontologist Julia Clarke lays out the basics of what we know so far—and where we might look for pieces of the puzzle that are still missing. The earliest “proto-feathers” were not flap-like scales; they were thin fibers that would have provided little aerodynamic advantage even if they were attached to, say, a tree-hopping glider. Feathers on modern birds perform a number of duties beyond enabling flight.
Medicinal Plants Hortus Medicus The Medicinal Plants Disclaimer: This page presents a description and history of the medicinal uses of these plants. The intention is not to provide specific medical advice. You should consult your personal physician before taking any form of medication. Achillea millefolium, Yarrow Achilleus, the greatest hero of the Trojan War in Homer’s “Iliad”, is reported to have used yarrow to stop the flow of blood from his wounds inflicted in battle. Alcea rosea, Hollyhock The flowers are used in the treatment of repiratory and inflammatory ailments and the root extracts to produce marshmallow sweets. Alchemilla vulgaris, Lady’s Mantle The common English name is accounted for by the leaves resemblance to a cloak worn by English women in medieval times. Allium cepa, Onion Like garlic, onions contain antibiotics and substances that lower blood sugar, serum cholesterol and blood pressure. Althea officinalis, True Marshmallow It is a native of Asia that has been naturalized in America.
Carnivorous plant has deleted most of its junk DNA Over the weekend, Nature released a paper that describes the genome of a fascinating creature with a rather unglamorous name: the bladderwort. These plants live in swampy or liquid environments and find it hard to get sufficient nutrients there, so the plants have turned carnivorous in order to survive. The bladders that give the group of related species its name are actually feeding organs. When an organism brushes up against their triggers, the bladders swell by sucking in the surrounding water, along with any organisms it carries. They then seal off, allowing the plant to digest its prey. The oddities continue at the molecular level. First, the details, then some perspective. A minimalist genome The bladderwort's 82 million base pair genome contains 28,500 genes, a number only slightly higher than those of its closest relatives. That's bizarre, because the plant has relatively little regulatory DNA. Why would deleting DNA be so favorable for these plants but not for most others?
New Age Range of new religious beliefs and practices New Age meditation group at the Snoqualmie Moondance festival, 1992 New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Precise scholarly definitions of the New Age differ in their emphasis, largely as a result of its highly eclectic structure. Although analytically often considered to be religious, those involved in it typically prefer the designation of spiritual or Mind, Body, Spirit and rarely use the term New Age themselves. Many scholars of the subject refer to it as the New Age movement, although others contest this term and suggest that it is better seen as a milieu or zeitgeist. Despite its highly eclectic nature, a number of beliefs commonly found within the New Age have been identified. Centered primarily in Western countries, those involved in the New Age have predominantly been from middle and upper-middle-class backgrounds. Definitions[edit] History[edit]
Cataloging the controlled chaos of the human genome The completion of the human genome, rather than being the huge breakthrough it was presented as, raised almost as many questions as it answered. Less than two percent of it encoded a protein, and only about five percent ended up being conserved relative to many of our fellow mammals. The rest of it seemed like a bit of a mess—damaged viruses, long stretches of repetitive sequence, and huge stretches devoid of any genes. The ENCODE project was formed to make sense of that mess. And it suggests that more of the chaos in the genome may be useful, although that suggestion comes with some big caveats. First, the data. Once a single cell type, like liver cells, was checked, the authors moved on to look at another. Functional or not? What does it tell us about the genome? And by that definition, most of the genome is doing something. But there are some problems with that figure. The authors mention a bit about where that additional five percent might come from. Definitions with consequences