Biotechnology: Can hydrogels solve our water problem?

Darkfrog submitted, created time 3 months 3 weeks (www.nature.com)

I remember reading BIll Bryson's description of a pre-blight American chestnut tree. When he came to the transpiration of water, he said, "imagine how much metal and noise humans would have to use to move that many gallons water."

Well artificial water transport just got a bit quieter, even if it can't match the chestnut just yet. A tiny microtree made from the same type of gel used to make contact lenses has mimicked water transport in plants. Scientists say that it could be used to extract water in dry places or make more efficient cooling systems

1 comment | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: water trees biotechnology hydrogels plants transpiration chips ground water water economy water supply water quality water use

Improvement of water use efficiency in rice by expression of HARDY, an Arabidopsis drought and salt tolerance gene

james submitted, created time 1 year 3 months (www.pnas.org)

Freshwater is a limited and dwindling global resource; therefore, efficient water use is required for food crops that have high water demands, such as rice, or for the production of sustainable energy biomass. We show here that expression of the Arabidopsis HARDY (HRD) gene in rice improves water use efficiency, the ratio of biomass produced to the water used, by enhancing photosynthetic assimilation and reducing transpiration.

Submit comment | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: photosynthetic water use freshwater rice transpiration

Constitutive activation of a plasma membrane H+-ATPase prevents abscisic acid-mediated stomatal closure

addict submitted, created time 1 year 6 months (www.nature.com)

We report two dominant mutations in the OPEN STOMATA2 (OST2) locus of Arabidopsis that completely abolish stomatal response to ABA, but importantly, to a much lesser extent the responses to CO2 and darkness. The OST2 gene encodes the major plasma membrane H+-ATPase AHA1, and both mutations cause constitutive activity of this pump, leading to necrotic lesions. H+-ATPases have been traditionally assumed to be general endpoints of all signaling pathways affecting membrane polarization and transport

Submit comment | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: acidification AHA1 necrosis salicylic acid transpiration