Why roots don't grow in the shade

When a plant finds itself in too much shade, it redirects its resources to reach for light. Crop yield and root development stall as the plant focuses on growing taller, striving to rise above neighboring plants to access ...

Using math to calculate the path of cancer

Biologists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) are using a mathematical approach developed in CSHL Assistant Professor David McCandlish's lab to find solutions to a diverse set of biological problems. Originally created ...

Polymers 'click' together using green chemistry

SOF4 is a gas that was discovered over a hundred years ago but is rarely used because it is difficult to prepare and highly reactive. Now a collaboration of chemists including Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor ...

How plants leave behind their parents' genomic baggage

Passing down a healthy genome is a critical part of creating viable offspring. But what happens when you have harmful modifications in your genome that you don't want to pass down? Baby plants have evolved a method to wipe ...

For tomato genes, one plus one doesn't always make two

Both people and tomatoes come in different shapes and sizes. That is because every individual has a unique set of genetic variations—mutations—that affect how genes act and function. Added together, millions of small ...

How to tame a restless genome

Short pieces of DNA—jumping genes—can bounce from one place to another in our genomes. When too many DNA fragments move around, cancer, infertility, and other problems can arise. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor ...

How human cells coordinate the start of DNA replication

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) President and CEO Bruce Stillman has been dissecting DNA replication, a critical step in cell division, since the 1980s. His lab studies how Origin Recognition Complexes—ORCs—coordinate ...

WOX9: A jack of all trades

Over evolutionary time scales, a single gene may acquire different roles in diverging species. However, revealing the multiple hidden roles of a gene was not possible before genome editing came along. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory ...

Tweaking corn kernels with CRISPR

Corn—or maize—has changed over thousands of years from weedy plants that make ears with less than a dozen kernels to the cobs packed with hundreds of juicy kernels that we see on farms today. Powerful DNA-editing techniques ...

Building a corn cob—cell by cell, gene by gene

Corn hasn't always been the sweet, juicy delight that we know today. And, without adapting to a rapidly changing climate, it is at risk of losing its place as a food staple. Putting together a plant is a genetic puzzle, with ...

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