News by Subject Biology

The Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) - Australia's national biodiversity database - uses cutting-edge digital tools to let people share, access and analyse data about local plants, animals and fungi, as well as environmental data like rainfall and temperature. All data are publicly available - ALA was established on open-access and open-source principles. A new forum paper published in the open-access, peer-reviewed Biodiversity Data Journal details ALA's background, current state and future directions.

In a new study published in the Phytobiomes Journal, "Influence of plant host and organ, management strategy, and spore traits on microbiome composition," Dr. Frances Trail and her research group are interested in three factors that might attribute to microbial assemblage: the age of the plant, the organ or tissue type, and the management strategy. They followed a 3-year crop rotation that included corn, wheat, and soybean planted in a single field.

The extent to which the composition of the microbiome of apples and oil pumpkins depends on the geographical location and what insights can be derived from this for breeding, health and shelf life of the fruits is shown in two recent publications by researchers at TU Graz.

Researchers have genetically engineered a probiotic yeast to produce beta-carotene in the guts of laboratory mice. The advance demonstrates the utility of work the researchers have done to detail how a suite of genetic engineering tools can be used to modify the yeast.

Even healthy adults harbour a diverse fungal environment in their lungs, as shown in a new study from researchers at the University of Bergen, Norway (UiB) published in PLOS ONE. The prevalence and severity of fungal infections have increased in recent years, and the Norwegian scientists have been examining fungi in both healthy and people with lung diseases

Tomatoes are an important and popular crop, but the tasty ketchup, salsa and pasta sauce they yield comes at a price: overuse of chemical fertilizers. Now, researchers report in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry they have recruited a fungus to bolster fertilizer efficiency, meaning tastier tomatoes can be grown with less fertilizer.