Monthly Archives: November 2012

Coriander – you either love it or you hate it

Coriander leaves (Coriandrum sativum), also known as Cilantro, arouse strong emotions.  Eaters are divided into those who find the flavour citrusy, fresh and pleasant against those who insist it is soapy, dirty and foul. A genetic role has long been suspected, from previous studies published in Flavour and other journals.  Mauer and El-Sohemy showed that… Read more »

Biology

Seeding the next generation of fuel crops

For biofuels to become more sustainable, lignocellulosic biomass from trees, grasses and plant stems is an appealing alternative to resource-heavy energy crops such as canola and maize. However, the high lignin content of second generation feedstocks makes them naturally recalcitrant to processing into fuel. While chemical engineers, microbiologists and enzymologists have made strides to overcome… Read more »

Biology

Seeding the next generation of fuel crops

For biofuels to become more sustainable, lignocellulosic biomass from trees, grasses and plant stems is an appealing alternative to resource-heavy energy crops such as canola and maize. However, the high lignin content of second generation feedstocks makes them naturally recalcitrant to processing into fuel. While chemical engineers, microbiologists and enzymologists have made strides to overcome… Read more »

Biology

Modeling and the logic of cell biology

With the current data revolution, what are the tools we have to interpret the vast amounts of -omics data generated daily? Can we build a model to understand what is happening in a cell? In an Opinion article in BMC Biology, Michael Blinov and Ion Moraru present the case for logic-derived modeling to meet this… Read more »

Biology

Challenging malaria head on

BioMed Central, in conjunction with its journals Malaria Journal and Parasites & Vectors, hosted the second malaria conference “Challenges in Malaria Research: Progress Towards Elimination” in Basel, Switzerland from 10 – 12 October 2012.

Biology

Movement Ecology is now accepting submissions

Movement phenomena are among the most basic characteristics of life, playing a key role in determining evolutionary and ecological processes including major global environmental concerns. Understanding movement of organisms requires merging tools and ideas across different disciplines. Thus, a new BioMed Central journal, Movement Ecology, is borne out of the awareness that an integrative paradigm… Read more »

Biology

Companion articles to the swine genome sequence

A series of articles in the BMC series and GigaScience accompany the publication of the swine genome sequence Today sees the publication of the genome sequence of the domestic pig in Nature by the Swine Genome Sequencing Consortium and sequencing of the Wuzhishan miniature pig in GigaScience . Accompanying these publications are a litter of companion… Read more »

Biology