— Archaeologists find new evidence of animals being introduced to prehistoric Caribbean — An archaeological research team from North Carolina State University, the University of Washington and University of Florida has found one of the most diverse collections of prehistoric…
— Microscopic worms could hold the key to living life on Mars — The astrophysicist Stephen Hawking believes that if humanity is to survive we will have up sticks and colonise space. But is the human body up to the challenge?…
— Chemical warfare of stealthy silverfish — A co-evolutionary arms race exists between social insects and their parasites. Army ants (Leptogenys distinguenda) share their nests with several parasites such as beetles, snails and…
— Stinky frogs are a treasure trove of antibiotic substances — Some of the nastiest smelling creatures on Earth have skin that produces the greatest known variety of anti-bacterial substances that hold promise for becoming new weapons in the battle…
— Genetic code of first arachnid cracked — An international team of scientists - including Ghent VIB scientists - has succeeded in deciphering the genome of the spider mite. This is also the first known genome of an arachnid.…
— How bats 'hear' objects in their path — By placing real and virtual objects in the flight paths of bats, scientists at the Universities of Bristol and Munich have shed new light on how echolocation works. Their research is…
— Counting cats: The endangered snow leopards of the Himalayas — The elusive snow leopard (Panthera uncia) lives high in the mountains across Central Asia. Despite potentially living across 12 countries the actual numbers of this beautiful large…
— Surprise role of nuclear structure protein in development — Scientists have long held theories about the importance of proteins called B-type lamins in the process of embryonic stem cells replicating and differentiating into different varieties…
— Pregnancy is a drag for bottlenose dolphins — Lumbering around during the final weeks before delivery is tough for any pregnant mum. Most females adjust their movements to compensate for the extreme physical changes that accompany…
Cracking the species code for plants
Plants are essential to our survival and that of most other animals on earth. It is easy to overlook this fact because they have become discretely embedded into our everyday lives. Plants provide us with food, medicines, and raw materials used by our industries. In spite of their importance, very few of us could name more than a tiny fraction of the plants that surround us. True, most would have little difficulty in distinguishing between a buttercup from a dandelion (provided both are in flower) but only a hand full of experts could identify all 1600 native plants in the UK, and nobody is able to name all of the 250,000 or so plant species recorded world-wide. Accurate plant identification on a large scale is nevertheless vital if we are to protect the most biodiverse regions of the world. Equally, plant identification based on DNA could help in the search for new sources of pharmaceutical drugs, check ingredients in food and industrial products or provide a new source of forensics information for criminal investigations.
In a step towards addressing these needs, a consortium of scientists from the United Kingdom, the USA, Sweden and Syria have collaborated in the search for one or more short pieces of DNA code that could eventually be used in an automated fashion to reliably identify almost all land plant species. This study, recently published in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, has provided a short-list of six gene regions that are present across almost all land plants, suitable for use on processed food products and sufficiently variable in their code to allow separation of closely related species. The next step is to test these regions (and a small number of others identified previously) against a very large number of plants from throughout the world.
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