News by Subject Biology

The perceived scale of the Amazon blazes received global attention this summer. However, international concerns raised at the time were countered by the Brazilian Government, which claimed the fire situation in August was 'normal' and 'below the historical average'. An international team of scientists writing in the journal Global Change Biology say the number of active fires in August was actually three times higher than in 2018 and the highest number since 2010.

The western corn rootworm, one of the world's most damaging maize pests, can use plant defense compounds to defend itself against its own natural enemies, so-called entomopathogenic nematodes. However, the nematodes can become immune against these compounds in turn, which enhances their ability to fight the western corn rootworm, as researchers at the University of Bern show. This mechanism may contribute to improving biological pest control.

When a plant begins growing its first leaves, it is in a race for survival to build its chloroplasts. Research from Japan and the UK reveals that a chain of communication from the developing chloroplast to the cell's central DNA center, the nucleus, is controlled in-part by a protein that defied characterization for the past quarter-century and there is also a role for a molecule recently made famous by the plant-based 'meat' industry: plant heme.

Lichens -- a combo of fungus and algae -- can grow on bare rocks, so scientists thought that lichens were some of the first organisms to make their way onto land from the water, changing the planet's atmosphere and paving the way for modern plants. But a closer look at the DNA of the algae and fungi that form lichens shows that lichens likely evolved millions of years after plants.

The world's tropical forests store huge quantities of carbon in their biomass and thus constitute an important carbon sink. However, current estimates of the amount of carbon dioxide stored in tropical forests of the Amazon vary largely. Scientists at the UFZ have developed an approach that uses recent satellite data to provide much more precise estimates of the amount of biomass in tropical forests than in the past.

Plants of the genus Erythroxylum are mainly known due to their use either in Coca Cola or as the drug cocaine. The controversial cultivation of the plants is an important income source for many farming communities in South American countries. A new interdisciplinary review now highlights the domestication history of the genus and examines numerous possible positive use cases of Erythroxylum, e.g. as medicines.

ASU researchers found that not only are freshwater aquatic plants affected by climate, they are also shaped by the surrounding landscape. When in an environment where CO2 is limited, aquatic plants use strategies to extract carbon from bicarbonate. Scientists identified patterns across ecoregions around the globe and discovered a direct link between the availability of catchment bicarbonate and the ability of aquatic plants to extract carbon from that bicarbonate.

Paper endorsed by 407 scientists in Brazil estimates the value of ecosystem services linked to nature conservation, such as pollination, pest control and water security.

A recent Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions article studies chitin-binding proteins from a soilborne fungus (Verticillium nonalfalfae) that causes vascular wilt in plants. This fungus binds a particular protein (VnaChtBP) to chitin in order to abolish the host plant's chitin-triggered burst of reactive oxygen species and shield the fungus from being digested by the plant.