Root Competition: Towards a Mechanistic Understanding

2003 ◽  
pp. 215-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. de Kroon ◽  
L. Mommer ◽  
A. Nishiwaki
2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (20) ◽  
pp. 2292-2303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Negar Talaei Zanjani ◽  
Monica Miranda Saksena ◽  
Fariba Dehghani ◽  
Anthony L. Cunningham

Hemocyanins are large and versatile glycoproteins performing various immunological and biological functions in many marine invertebrates including arthropods and molluscs. This review discusses the various pharmacological applications of mollusc hemocyanin such as antiviral activity, immunostimulatory and anticancer properties that have been reported in the literature between the years 2000 and 2016. Emphasis is placed on a better mechanistic understanding of hemocyanin as a therapeutic agent. Elucidation of the mechanism of action is essential to improve the clinical efficacy and for a better understanding of some endogenous immunological functions of this complex glycoprotein.


AoB Plants ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bin J W Chen ◽  
Li Huang ◽  
Heinjo J During ◽  
Xinyu Wang ◽  
Jiahe Wei ◽  
...  

Abstract Root competition is a key factor determining plant performance, community structure and ecosystem productivity. To adequately estimate the extent of root proliferation of plants in response to neighbours independently of nutrient availability, one should use a setup that can simultaneously control for both nutrient concentration and soil volume at plant individual level. With a mesh-divider design, which was suggested as a promising solution for this problem, we conducted two intraspecific root competition experiments one with soybean (Glycine max) and the other with sunflower (Helianthus annuus). We found no response of root growth or biomass allocation to intraspecific neighbours, i.e. an ‘ideal free distribution’ (IDF) norm, in soybean; and even a reduced growth as a negative response in sunflower. These responses are all inconsistent with the hypothesis that plants should produce more roots even at the expense of reduced fitness in response to neighbours, i.e. root over-proliferation. Our results suggest that neighbour-induced root over-proliferation is not a ubiquitous feature in plants. By integrating the findings with results from other soybean studies, we conclude that for some species this response could be a genotype-dependent response as a result of natural or artificial selection, or a context-dependent response so that plants can switch from root over-proliferation to IDF depending on the environment of competition. We also critically discuss whether the mesh-driver design is the ideal solution for root competition experiments.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel M. Blau ◽  
Hetal D Patel ◽  
Evan Walter Clark Spotte-Smith ◽  
Xiaowei Xie ◽  
Shyam Dwaraknath ◽  
...  

Modeling reactivity with chemical reaction networks could yield fundamental mechanistic understanding that would expedite the development of processes and technologies for energy storage, medicine, catalysis, and more. Thus far, reaction...


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