Increased adoption of the systems approach to biological research has focused attention on the use of quantitative models of biological objects. This includes a need for realistic 3D representations of plant shoots for quantification and modelling. We present a fully automatic approach to image-based 3D plant reconstruction. The reconstructed plants are represented as a series of small planar s...

Selenium (Se) occurs in various forms in soils, including inorganic selenite and selenate and organic selenomethionine. Plant uptake of the inorganic, but not the organic forms, has been studied extensively. Organic-Se uptake was therefore examined in two-grooved milkvetch (Astragalus bisulcatus (Hook.) Gray), a Se-accumulating forb, and western wheatgrass (Pascopyrum (Rydb.) Love), a non-Se ac...

Plant-associated microbes have specific beneficial functions and are considered key drivers for plant health. The bacterial community structure of healthy Anthurium andraeanum L. plants was studied by 16S rRNA gene pyrosequencing associated with different plant parts and the rhizosphere. A limited number of bacterial taxa, i.e., Sinorhizobium, Fimbriimonadales, and Gammaproteobacteria HTCC2089 ...

Theory has long predicted allocation patterns for plant defense against herbivory, but only recently have both above- and belowground plant defenses been considered simultaneously. Milkweeds in the genus Asclepias are a classic chemically defended clade of plants with toxic cardenolides (cardiac glycosides) and pressurized latex employed as anti-herbivore weapons. Here we combine a comparative ...

Drought is a major limiting factor of crop productivity worldwide and its incidence is predicted to increase under climate change. Drought adaptation of cool-season grasses is thus a major challenge to secure the agricultural productivity under current and future climate conditions. Endophytes are non-pathogenic plant-associated bacteria that can play an important role in conferring resistance ...

Meiotic homologous recombination plays a central role in creating genetic variability, making it an essential biological process relevant to evolution and crop breeding. In this study, we used pollen-specific fluorescent tagged lines (FTLs) to measure male meiotic recombination frequency during the development of Arabidopsis thaliana. Interestingly, a subset of pollen grains consistently shows ...

The iteration of the Lindenmayer system (L-system) has been used to animate the plant growth, however the development of the plant model at each time step is not smooth and continuous. This paper proposes an animating plant growth in L-system by a time embedded component and growth function for the length, size and position of each component of the plant shoot and root, such as, plant internode...

Bamboo shoots have a long history of its utilization as food and medicine and are rich in nutrient components such as proteins, carbohydrates, minerals, vitamins and bioactive compounds. Due to presence of bioactive compounds phenols, phytosterols and dietary fibres, they play a vital role in health promotion as well as prevention of cardiovascular, cancer and chronic diseases. But, due to pres...

Introduction: Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is a malignant clonal disorder of hematopoietic stem cells resulting in the increase of myeloid cells, erythroid cells and platelets in the peripheral blood and hyperplasia in bone marrow. The research evaluated the cytotoxic effects of hydro-alcoholic extracts of Lepidium Sativum (Cress plant) shoots before and after flowering on K562 cell line as a...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Plant growth responses to the rare earth elements lanthanum (La) and cerium (Ce) have been reported, but little is known about the effects of these two elements on plant mineral nutrition. METHODS Corn (Zea mays 'Hycorn 82') and mungbean (Vigna radiata 'Berken') were grown in continuous flowing nutrient solutions containing 0, 0.2, 1.0 and 5.0 microm La or Ce. At harvest p...