Every plant cell is the product of a biological merger billions of years ago. Chloroplasts are key structures in plants and algae that capture sunlight, but originally they were free-living bacteria ...

Optimal packing problems have inspired mathematicians for centuries. Biophysicists now add a layer to the question: How do chloroplasts arrange themselves optimally within cells, when the meaning of ...

Chloroplasts may seem like docile farmers of light. But inside these microscopic plant and algal cell structures lurks the spirit of a warrior. When a pathogen attacks a plant, chloroplasts stop ...

Seeing the polymerase molecule that transcribes photosynthetic genes in the plant chloroplast. Images of individual molecules collected with an electron microscope were sorted and aligned to reveal ...

While vitamin C in plant chloroplasts is known to help prevent a reduction in growth that plants experience when exposed to excessive light -- a phenomenon called photoinhibition -- how it gets into ...

It is said that 10 to 15% of the world's agricultural production loss is caused by diseases, which is equivalent of the food for about 500 million people. And since 70-80% of this plant disease is ...

SOME SEA slugs are kleptomaniacs. Elysia crispata, a species of these marine molluscs found in the western Atlantic and the Caribbean, is among the most notorious. When the slugs eat algae, their ...