Author Archives: Daniel Marino
The power of herbaria: a time machine for plant biology research
Naturalists and scientists have been collecting plants or plant parts during centuries to make collections and catalogues known as herbaria (sing. herbarium) that have been traditionally used for comparative taxonomy and systematics research. The first herbarium collections were compiled […]
How do flowers release their perfume?
Plants emit a great amount of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). They are mainly produced in flowers and fruits and confer them their classical pleasant smell. However, leaves and roots also emit an important quantity of volatiles.
VOCs have different functions […]
Why and when did tomatoes lose their flavour?
I am sure that all of you have had table conversations about the flavour of tomato fruits: “These tomatoes have no taste” complained the little boy; “When I was a child tomatoes were much better, now they are tasteless” said […]
Engineering nitrogen-fixing cereals, between science fiction and reality
Every organism, from virus to animals need nitrogen (N) to live; indeed, nucleic acids and proteins are made out with N. Nearly all of these organisms, fulfill their nitrogen needs taken up N from the environment in reduced forms, usually […]
Playing with the sex of melons and cucumbers
Plants reproduce sexually to ensure genetic variability and thus, to continuously evolve in a constantly changing environment. In angiosperms, flowers are the sexual organs and most angiosperms are hermaphroditic, this means they have bisexual flowers with both male and female […]
A plant biologist inside a bakery
In recent years, when I enter into a bakery my decision of which bread to buy is getting more and more complicated because of the high variety of bread available. Bread is “in appearance” a simple product just made out […]
Genetic engineering of insect-free plants
Plants are sessile organisms, which means they can´t move around. Of course, they have some types of movements like turning towards the sun but the place where the seed germinates the plant will stay during their entire life cycle. Obviously, […]
miPEPs: Coding in non-coding plant primary transcripts of microRNAs
Most famous RNAs are coding or messenger RNAs (mRNAs) which are the ones that ribosomes read to synthesize proteins. However, many other RNAs are transcribed from DNA and are known as non-coding RNAs. Among those, ribosomic RNAs (rRNAs) which are […]
The future of rice and the rice of the future
Every day, each person on the planet consumes 2868 Kcal, 19% of those calories come from the world’s most important crop, rice, closely followed by wheat (F.A.O). In some Asian countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia or Philippines rice represents up […]
On the origin of carnivorous plants: the oldest fossil found in Baltic amber
The cover of this post probably shows the world’s most famous carnivorous plant (Figure 1). It´s name is Audrey II and it appeared in the music film “Little shop of horrors”, directed by Franz Oz in 1986 adapting the film […]