Adventure Ausrama Blog

Why do plant seeds in Australia start germinating after a fire? It is because of Karrikin Insensitive2 (KAI2) a protein which has been present in plants for millions of years. KAI2 has been important for all plants for 400 million years. When the KAI2 protein was removed from a higher, more recent plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, its leaves malformed. Yet splicing the KAI2 back by taking it from the ancient Selaginella resulted in improved A. thaliana growth, but it could no longer detect the presence of smoke the normal function of KAI2. This finding shows the more general function of KAI2. It not only identifies karrikins in smoke, it is important for plant growth. "Sensing" is the main purpose of KAI2. Apparently it can be tuned to detect different things. This could help farmers control seed germination times. Wheat is notorious for germinating in the grain during heavy rain periods. Being able to spray a chemical that stops this would save millions of...

The Pollard farm looks like an ordinary farm but there is something that makes it unique. Many cows there are identical. Indeed, 20 are clones. They are copies of the most productive animals around. It must be noted, however, that the clones real age is their actual age plus the age of the animal they were cloned from. This is the problem with cloning, but, in breeding animals that give more meat and milk there has been no major obstacles. Less feed is required per pound of meat or liter of milk. Clones also reproduce quicker with reduced complications. This is good for the environment: less fertilizer and diesel is used. There are issues with genetic tampering of animals and crops. Scientists are saying that despite decades of work no genetically modified crop has yet been adopted worldwide. Because only people from high-income countries eat meat, cloning of cows will not help world hunger. The real challenge with cloning of cows is the high cost - $15,000 per animal. So meat from th...