Each cell produces during metabolic processes various by-products, including molecules possessing reactive oxygen (so called “reactive oxygen species”, ROS). Such a molecules react very readily with almost everything, what can be dangerous situation for cells. Therefore, the cells not only developed the way how to mitigate potential risk, but they also started to use ROS in their favor. They...
Plant viruses can spread over long distance by different ways. In the modern history, their expansion was driven mainly by human when trading with plants and their fruits. That has been recently documented by the international team of scientists in the case of plant virus, which is an important pathogen of various agricultural plants worldwide. The rise of this virus began in 17th century on...
How do plant cells communicate, sense information from the environment and coordinate between different parts of the plant? How is this communication orchestrated? These are some of questions which will be answered by newly established laboratory of “Plant Molecular Signaling” led by Michael Wrzaczek, who joined the team of the Institute of Plant Molecular Biology - Biology Centre CAS at the...
Plant virologists from the Institute of Plant Molecular Biology - Biology centre CAS have started to participate on the new program " Virology and antiviral strategy " which is part of Strategy AV21 targeting " Top research in the public interest “. Together with their colleagues from the Institute of Parasitology - Biology centre CAS, and with three other...
More medical substances and bitter acids in hop – that is the aim, the scientists from the Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences (BC CAS) would like to achieve. They reported the first successful modification of hop using the latest CRISPR genetic technology, which allows very precise targeting of a selected gene. As a first success, the technique was tested on a gene influencing the...
RepeatExplorer is a computational pipeline designed to identify and quantify repetitive sequences in eukaryotic genomes. The pipeline was developed by scientists from the Laboratory of Molecular Cytogenetics of the Biology Centre seven years ago, and since then it has become widely adopted for repetitive DNA analysis in plant and animal genomes. Its new version, featuring several major...
Metals in plants - this is the issue that will be jointly tackled by experts from one hundred and ten laboratories from 30 European countries. A new project "TRACE METAL METABOLISM IN PLANTS (PLANTMETALS)" was launched in October, bringing together biologists, (bio)physicists, (bio-geo)chemists, molecular geneticists, ecologists, agronomists and soil scientists to produce not only new insights...
Nuclear genome size, corresponding to the total length of DNA molecules in cell nuclei, varies more than 2,000-fold between different plant species. The genome size is not proportional to the number of genes, complexity, or size of the plant species. For example, the genome of the oak tree is surprisingly 65-fold smaller than the genome of some herbs like Paris quadrifolia (Figure). This herb...
On Monday, May 11th, the Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences has opened a new laboratory adapted for testing clinical samples for coronavirus. The current testing capacity of the Biology Centre, which was one hundred analyses per day since March 23, has now increased to 150 tests per day. If necessary, the total capacity of the Biology centre can be extended up to 200 samples...
Whenever the European dodder, Cuscuta europaea, is under scientific scrutiny, it usually is due to its non-functional chloroplasts and its concomitant parasitic lifestyle. Scientists from the Czech Republic and Germany have now discovered another curiosity of this plant parasite. The chromosome areas responsible for proper segregation of genetic material during the division of the cell differ...
