Cultivated plants are the core of human nutrition. To ensure our food supply, plant breeders are in an ongoing race with newly emerging pests and diseases. Deterioration of growing conditions due to climate change and ever-increasing demand provide further challenges. Traditionally, plant breeders wait an... click to read more

Genome editing is the ability to modify an organism's genetic information, stored in the DNA. In order to alter the genome, scientists were inspired by a system found in nature called CRISPR/Cas9. It is a primitive immune system found in bacteria that allows them to... click to read more

Humans have kept honey bees for millennia, and scientists love to study them because of their unique societies (80,000 bees can live and work together in a single hive!) and communication (they exchange information by "dancing"). Honey bees also help produce much of the food... click to read more

It’s got to be one of the most popular fruits around: the banana. Although there are over a 1000 varieties, few people realize that almost the whole banana export is dependent on one type of banana, the Cavendish. This banana - cultivated by the personal... click to read more

DNA is the core-element of life as we know it. It can be imagined as a long helical double strand composed of sequences of information written with four chemical "letters" called nucleotides. Determinate sequences of letters delineate stretches of DNA called genes, which in turn... click to read more