Rachel's Blog – October 2023 Archive (2)

As global temperatures continue to rise, maintaining the quality and yield of cold-adapted crops will increasingly become a challenge. One crop known to be affected by higher nighttime temperatures during the ripening stage is rice, which exhibits a condition known as "chalkiness" due to heat stress.

Chalky refers to rice grains that are less dense due to the reduced concentration of starch. This can lead to lower grind yields, cooking quality and overall market…

Wang Chengshu's research group from the Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences published a paper entitled "A bacterial-like Pictet-Spenglerase drives the evolution of fungi to produce b-carboline glycosides together with separate genes" in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). This study reveals the molecular mechanism of the entomopathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana acquiring a bacterial-derived horizontal transfer (HGT) gene to…