Articles by Amy Coombs

Doctors turn to good microbes to fight disease. Will the same strategy work with crops?

There's a lot more than dirt to the soil in which plants grow.

Diverse plant communities create a disease-fighting "soil genotype."

How plants pass defenses to offspring through a complex molecular network

Infested plants pass on a defense memory of pests and pathogens to help the next generation withstand invasions.

Plant pests are evolving to outsmart common herbicides, costing farmers crops and money.

A breakthrough in somatic cell nuclear transfer opens the possibility of producing human embryonic stem cells with a patient’s own genes.

By Amy Coombs Fuel from Fallow Biologists seek to make energy from biodiesel waste. © MICHAEL AUSTIN After Rudolf Diesel debuted his peanut oil engine at the World’s Fair in 1900, it wasn’t uncommon to see hemp, tallow, and corn oil used for energy. But when fossil fuel prices dropped in the 1940s, biodiesel—a renewable fuel source made by separating methyl esters from glycerin in vegetable oil—fell into obscurity, and petroleum di

By Amy Coombs Catch of the day © Greg Lynch Even discriminating sushi connoisseurs would envy the tuna George Amato has sampled. The purpose of the tasty experiment: Use DNA barcoding to find out if threatened species of tuna are sold in the United States market. Barcoding relies on a short fragment of mitochondrial DNA found in virtually all living things. The 650 base-pair region, part of the cytochrome oxidase I (COI) gene, accu

By Amy Coombs Green at the Bench Replacing your lab's chemical "worst offenders" with less toxic alternatives. Going green in the lab often involves large-scale, institutional changes that the average researcher alone cannot bring about. If an institution's bureaucracy selects against better waste-processing systems, there isn't much a single scientist can do. But there's a lot that can be done on a bench-by-bench basis to reduce toxic exposure

Credit: Courtesy of Sorenson BioScience" /> Credit: Courtesy of Sorenson BioScience In labs across the world, heaping piles of pipette tip boxes spill out of trashcans and onto the floor. A single lab can burn through hundreds of pipette tips in an hour, creating enormous waste. In an attempt to minimize the waste, Jonathan Trent's protein chemistry lab at NASA AMES reuses all of its micropipette tip boxes.

Mark Merchant takes blood sample from an alligator. Credit: Troy Merchant" />Mark Merchant takes blood sample from an alligator. Credit: Troy Merchant Alligator wounds are a remarkable thing. Within only 12-24 hours, gators' torn tissue begins a healing process that takes five days to start in humans. And even though gators swim in microbe-infested waters, their wounds almost never become infected. This healing abili

Fluorescence indicates chlorotoxin binding to medulloblastoma cells in a mouse (right). Credit: Image by Mandana Veiseh, courtesy of AACR" />Fluorescence indicates chlorotoxin binding to medulloblastoma cells in a mouse (right). Credit: Image by Mandana Veiseh, courtesy of AACR Within minutes after being stung by the scorpion known as the deathstalker (Leiurus quinquestriatus), weakness starts to kick in. The feeling quickly spreads, paralyzing its prey (typically insects) for hours -

Bone cell protein regulates insulin, says new study

First genome-wide study in HIV patients links HLA gene to proliferation of virus