1. Habitat fragmentation and variation in habitat quality can both affect plant performance, but their effects have rarely been studied in combination. We thus examined plant performance in response to differences in habitat quality for a species subject to habitat fragmentation, the common but declining perennial herb Lychnis flos-cuculi. 2. We reciprocally transplanted plants between 15 fen g...

A systematic review focused by plant on non-target impacts from agents deliberately introduced for the biological control of weeds found significant non-target impacts to be rare. The magnitude of direct impact of 43 biocontrol agents on 140 non-target plants was retrospectively categorized using a risk management framework for ecological impacts of invasive species (minimal, minor, moderate, m...

Background: A highly efficient genetic transformation system is essential for a successful genetic manipulation of the African violet (Saintpaulia ionantha Wendl.). Objectives: Developing a particle bombardment-based genetic transformation system for the African violet. Materials and Methods: A local cultivar of the African violet from Guilan province was used for transformation experiments. Th...

During the negotiations with EU, Estonia was set an indicative target to increase the share of renewable energy sources in the electricity production to 5.1% of inland consumption by the year 2010. Similarly to the rest of Europe, one of the main means to achieve this target is to install wind turbines. The current paper analyses the capability of existing oil-shale power plants to cover differ...

We examine how firms redraw their boundaries after acquisitions using plant-level data. We find that there is extensive restructuring in a short period following mergers and full-firm acquisitions. Acquirers of full firms sell 27% and close 19% of the plants of target firms within three years of the acquisition. Acquirers with skill in running their peripheral divisions tend to retain more acqu...

The production of pharmaceutical proteins in plants provides a valuable alternative to other traditional eukaryotic expression systems from economic and safety perspectives. The moss Physcomitrella patens allows the expression and secretion of complex target proteins into a simple aqueous maintenance medium, which facilitates downstream processing by rendering it less complex. To address the qu...

microRNA156 (miR156) affects developmental timing in flowering plants. miR156 and its target relationships with members of the SQUAMOSA PROMOTER BINDING PROTEIN-LIKE (SPL) gene family appear universally conserved in land plants, but the specific functions of miR156 outside of flowering plants are unknown. We find that miR156 promotes a developmental change from young filamentous protonemata to ...

Many targets of plant microRNAs (miRNAs) are thought to play important roles in plant physiology and development. However, because plant miRNAs are typically encoded by medium-size gene families, it has often been difficult to assess their precise function. We report the generation of a large-scale collection of knockdowns for Arabidopsis thaliana miRNA families; this has been achieved using ar...