What to make of Junk DNA A few weeks ago, science writer Carl Zimmer wrote (and literally bled in T. Ryan Gregory’s lab) a column in the New York Times exploring “junk” DNA. It’s a really good piece that also hits on how scientists have been arguing for a long time about what’s adaptive, what’s random, … More A small plant genome and “junk” DNA.
Einstein’s theories of relativity enables out modern global positioning system (GPS) to work because the satellites have to correct for the distances between the satellites and Earth. This was not the intent when Einstein derived the mathematics of the relativistic universe. At least I don’t think it was. He was playing around with figuring out how … More From nature to product.
Before getting into this week’s post, I’d like to remind my readers that the discoveries of plant science I talk about here are going on in plants everywhere. The details may vary and the specific output responses might be different, but the research plant scientists do translates to most plants. The processes that go on … More My greatest moment in plant science.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about auxin. And how auxin signaling works. As promised in my last post, I’m going to tell the story of identifying the auxin receptor and a recent development in the story. Background. Ascribing a function to genes (a single unit of the multi-gene/genome DNA blueprint of an organism) is … More The Auxin Receptor(s).
It’s hormone month at The Quiet Branches. It makes a little sense now that I think about it. Love is supposedly in the air with Valentine’s Day and the plants that go dormant for winter will soon be back, engaging their hormone pathways to sprout new growth. In a way, I hope I’m teaching you … More Plant Hormones: Ethylene
Here is a list of small molecule (chemical) signals used by most/all plants: Auxin Cytokinin Ethylene Abscisic acid Gibberellin Salicylic acid Jasmonic acid Brassinosteroids Strigolactones Don’t worry about what these names mean or what these things are for now. I’ll be writing posts about them in the coming weeks. Hormones In human growth and development, … More Plant hormones: Auxin.
The Quiet Branches 