AMES, Iowa – Scientists are working to bioengineer a common defense mechanism that most plants develop naturally to protect against drought, insects and other environmental stresses. The goal is to ...

Plant cuticles, comprising cutin and an array of wax compounds, serve as an essential barrier that regulates water loss, gas exchange and provides defence against environmental stressors. The ...

The plant cuticle consists of aliphatic wax and cutin, and covers all the aerial tissues, conferring resistance to both biotic and abiotic stresses. In this study, we performed phenotypic ...

Land plants are a monophyletic group that arose from a common ancestor that would be classified with the charophycean green algae. Thus early divergent plants and charophycean algae can be used as ...

Sheen says plants have an effective and sophisticated immune system. Their first line of defense is a thick cell wall covered with cuticle layers that acts somewhat like human skin. If a pathogen is ...

Biologists have discovered a mechanism in mosses that was crucial for the evolution of ecosystems on land. The investigators discovered this mechanism that facilitated the evolutionary transition of ...

The paper P. Liao et al., “Cuticle thickness affects dynamics of volatile emission from petunia flowers,” Nat Chem Biol, doi:10.1038/s41589-020-00670-w, 2020 ...

Most plants get their coloration from pigments, but an endangered South African cycad gets its unique silvery-blue hue from wax crystals and an underlying chlorophyll-rich layer, according to a recent ...

At the risk of sounding biased, I would like to suggest that citrus trees are the ideal garden plants. With their shining evergreen leaves and fragrant flowers, citrus trees make excellent garden ...

Plants have effective mechanisms aimed at protecting themselves against bacteria and fungi. Research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and published in the February 28 issue of Nature ...