Chloroplasts News and Research

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Exploring metabolic compatibility as a possible limiting factor to prokayrotic endosymbioses

"One of the great mysteries of biology," says Eric Libby, former SFI Postdoctoral Fellow, now an associate professor at the Integrated Science Lab (IceLab), Umeå University in Sweden, "is eukaryogenesis, or how eukaryotes arose." Scientists consider this to be a period of major evolutionary transition, critical to our understanding of the history and evolution of life on Earth.

24 Apr 2023

Advancements and challenges of constructing artificial mitochondria and chloroplasts

Energy production in nature is the responsibility of chloroplasts and mitochondria and is crucial for fabricating sustainable, synthetic cells in the lab.

28 Mar 2023

Researchers identify universal features shaping organelle gene retention

Mitochondria are compartments – so-called "organelles" -- in our cells that provide the chemical energy supply we need to move, think, and live.

16 Sep 2022

Researchers design and engineer artificial photosynthetic life-forms through endosymbiosis

Every plant, animal or other nucleus-containing cell also harbors an array of miniature "organs" that perform essential functions for the cell. In plants, for example, organelles called chloroplasts photosynthesize to generate energy for the organism.

3 May 2022

Manipulating carotenoids can improve plant growth, stress tolerance and increase yield

Manipulating the content of carotenoids, such as ß-carotene, has been found to improve plant growth and increase yield and tolerance to abiotic stresses such as drought and salinity.

7 Mar 2022

New computer program can read any genome sequence and decipher its genetic code

Yekaterina "Kate" Shulgina was a first year student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, looking for a short computational biology project so she could check the requirement off her program in systems biology. She wondered how genetic code, once thought to be universal, could evolve and change.

9 Nov 2021

Researchers find how iron deficient plants protect themselves from damaging light

Researchers have identified how iron deficient plants protect themselves from damaging light, according to a Dartmouth study.

13 Oct 2021

Researchers aim to develop edible plant-based mRNA vaccines

The future of vaccines may look more like eating a salad than getting a shot in the arm. UC Riverside scientists are studying whether they can turn edible plants like lettuce into mRNA vaccine factories.

16 Sep 2021

Study compares DNA extraction and amplification methods used for microbiome research

Let's face it, we are a results-driven society. Too focused on the outcome, people don't often think about the "how." For instance, did you think about "how" you got to work this morning or did you just get there? In microbiome studies the results are the graphs and the data but the "how," like commuting, is often just part of a routine.

14 Sep 2021

Research project focusing on membraneless organelles receives funding from Volkswagen Foundation

As part of its "Life?" project, the Volkswagen Foundation is funding a research project that is placing membraneless organelles within cells in the spotlight as a way of understanding the fundamental processes that are essential to life.

6 Sep 2021

New study shines light on how plant cells perceive and respond to mechanical forces

Minuscule tunnels through the cell membrane help cells to perceive and respond to mechanical forces, such as pressure or touch. A new study in the journal Science is among the first to directly investigate what one type of these mechanosensitive ion channels is doing in the tip-growing cells in moss and pollen tubes of flowering plants, and how.

29 Jul 2021

Surprising similarities found in membrane proteins of bacteria and humans

The cells of simple organisms, such as bacteria, as well as human cells are surrounded by a membrane, which fulfills various tasks including protecting the cell from stress.

24 Jun 2021

Advancing a protein drug in lettuce leaves to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension

In pulmonary arterial hypertension, high blood pressure in the lungs' arteries causes the heart to work extra hard to pump blood to the lungs and around the rest of the body.

16 Feb 2020

UK-based scientists aim to make infant formula more like human breast milk

UK-based scientists have engineered plants to produce an oil that mimics the chemical structure of human milk fat, a major component of breast milk.

1 Oct 2019

Chloroplast retrograde signaling attenuates elongation response to shade in plants

Plants need sunlight to feed and grow. Without light, the photosynthesis, the reaction by which the plant chloroplasts convert atmospheric CO2 and water into sugars and oxygen, cannot take place.

6 Feb 2019

Researchers describe new behavior in energy metabolism that refutes existing evidence

Researchers from the Catalonian Institute of Bioengineering and the Seville Chemical Research Institute have described a new method for the transmission of electrons between proteins that refutes the evidence from experiments until now.

17 Jan 2019

Researchers develop new DNA-based test to detect trace amounts of peanuts in foods

For people with severe peanut allergies, eating even miniscule amounts of the legume can trigger anaphylaxis --- a life-threatening condition characterized by dizziness, breathing difficulties and, sometimes, loss of consciousness.

5 Sep 2018

Scientists identify special pair of RNA scissors with many functions

CRISPR/Cas systems are known as promising "gene scissors" in the genome editing of plants, animals, and microorganisms by targeting specific regions in their DNA - and perhaps they can even be used to correct genetic defects.

8 Feb 2018

Researchers discover mechanism that corrects protein misfolding in plants

Various human nervous system diseases, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and Parkinson's diseases, are associated with the same basic disorder: the loss of nerve cells capacity to fold their proteins correctly, which causes protein aggregations that form "clumps" that end up generating the cell death.

25 Oct 2017

Penn researchers develop plant-based oral vaccine booster

Jonas Salk created a vaccine against polio that has been used since 1955; Albert Sabin created another version that has been on the market since 1961. Together, these two vaccines have nearly eliminated polio from the face of the earth.

20 Jul 2016