In the world of academic science, hiring new faculty members typically follows a predictable pattern: candidates apply individually and are evaluated primarily on their personal achievements. What if there was a way to build more collaborative, diverse teams of...
As our climate changes and soil salinity increases in many agricultural areas, finding crops that can thrive in these challenging conditions is crucial. Cultivated tomatoes, while delicious, often struggle in salty soils. Their wild cousins, however, have evolved to...
Cotton is woven into the very fabric of our lives, from soft T-shirts to comfortable jeans and cozy bedsheets. It’s the world’s leading renewable textile fiber and the backbone of a global industry worth billions.As climate change intensifies, cotton farmers face...
Imagine a small fruit that tastes like a cross between a tomato and a pineapple, wrapped in its own natural paper lantern. That’s the groundcherry (Physalis grisea) – a little-known relative of tomatoes that’s been quietly growing in gardens and...
A new study challenges the common theory that the devastating potato blight pathogen Phytophthora infestans originated in Mexico. Researchers meticulously reconstructed its global migration history and found it likely originated in the South American Andes before...
Phenotyping, which involves assessing observable plant characteristics, is crucial for understanding plant development and response to environmental stresses. Traditional methods are often cumbersome, costly, and destructive, limiting research scope and scale. A new...
Plants and the animals that eat them have evolved together in fascinating ways, creating a dynamic interplay of survival strategies. Many plants have developed physical and chemical defenses to fend off herbivores. A well-known strategy in flowering plants is to...
Maize is one of the world’s most widely grown crops and is essential to global food security. But like other plants, its growth and productivity can be limited by the slow activity of Rubisco, the enzyme responsible for carbon assimilation during photosynthesis. In a...
The Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) proudly announces that Maria Harrison, the William H. Crocker Professor at BTI and an Adjunct Professor at Cornell University’s School of Plant Sciences, has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, the United Kingdom’s national...
On April 23rd, Georg Jander, a professor from the Boyce Thompson Institute, addressed an audience in the offices of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. In a compelling presentation titled “The Next Agricultural Revolution: Targeted...
In a fascinating dive into the past, a team of researchers from the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) and USDA has uncovered intriguing details about the origins and spread of the bottle gourd, one of the oldest domesticated crops. Their research, recently published in...
Imagine: You find the dried-up remains of a once green and lush philodendron on your bookshelf and realize you can’t remember the last time you watered your houseplants. You soak the soil with water, hoping you can breathe life back into its desiccated husk, but it is...
Mounting evidence suggests that the secret to understanding human health and combating metabolic diseases lies hidden within the microscopic world of our gut bacteria. Recent research by scientists at the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) and Cornell University reveals...
The intricate dance of nature often unfolds in mysterious ways, hidden from the naked eye. At the heart of this enigmatic tango lies a vital partnership: the symbiosis between plants and a type of fungi known as arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. New groundbreaking...
In a world where the intricacies of molecular biology often seem as vast and mysterious as the cosmos, a new groundbreaking study delves into the microscopic universe of proteins, unveiling a fascinating aspect of their existence. This revelation could hold profound...
An international team of researchers has uncovered a remarkable genetic phenomenon in lycophytes, which are similar to ferns and among the oldest land plants. Their study, recently published in the journal PNAS, reveals that these plants have maintained a consistent...
In the fascinating world of plant biology, an innovative study recently featured on the cover of The Plant Journal has been turning heads. The research delves into the intricate defense mechanisms of tomatoes against the notorious bacterial pathogen, Pseudomonas...
In a significant advancement in the field of biochemistry, scientists at BTI and Cornell University have uncovered new insights into a family of metabolites, acylspermidines, that could change how we understand aging and fight diseases.The study, recently published in...
Peppers are a versatile, flavorful, and widely popular crop, used not only as a healthy food source but also for their medicinal properties. In a pioneering study recently published in Nature Communications, an international team of researchers, including scientists...
The International Society for Plant Pathology (ISPP) recently announced that incoming BTI president Dr. Silvia Restrepo has been honored with the 13th Jakob Eriksson Prize for Plant Pathology, the highest international accolade in the field. The award was presented on...
Watermelon is a globally significant agricultural product, both in terms of the total amount produced and the total economic value generated.Scientists at the Boyce Thompson Institute have constructed a comprehensive “super-pangenome” for watermelon and...
You probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that watermelon is the second largest fruit crop in the world (if you don’t count tomatoes as a fruit), just barely behind bananas. However, you may be surprised by a few of these lesser-known watermelon facts:...
On June 27, Boyce Thompson Institute welcomed ten high school students to our High School Research Experience and two high school students to our Workforce Advantage Program. The High School Research Experience focuses on training and inspiring the next generation of...
Tomatoes are a staple in diets worldwide and an essential part of sustainable agriculture. Now, scientists at BTI have reported groundbreaking insights into a long-known tomato mutation, unlocking the potential for enhanced fruit quality and stress...
On June 5, Boyce Thompson Institute welcomed 39 undergraduate students from colleges across the country to experience the life of a researcher for 10 weeks. Now in its 23rd year, BTI’s NSF funded Plant Genome Research Program (PGRP) and USDA funded Innovations in...
We are proud to announce the appointment of Dr. Silvia Restrepo as BTI’s ninth and first female president. She will assume the position in October, succeeding President David Stern, who has led the organization since 2004. This historic appointment comes as BTI...
Magdalena Julkowska and Julie Bell recently traveled to the Netherlands, where they performed a factory acceptance test on BTI’s new phenotyping facility!The facility will allow side and top-view RGB imaging, masking on chlorophyll fluorescence, as well as top-view...
A new perspective published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology uncovers a previously unknown biochemical recycling process in animals. The authors review a flurry of recent papers demonstrating that animals extensively recycle biochemical waste to produce novel...
The Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) is delighted to announce that faculty member Fay-Wei Li has been promoted to Associate Professor on January 13. Li was evaluated on his achievements to date and likelihood of continued success in the future. Since joining BTI in...
Killing crop-damaging insects by targeting genes essential to their survival is a promising approach to pest control. Because essential genes are often conserved across multiple insect species, the challenge is finding targets whose silencing kills the pests but not...
As climate change is expected to lead to more frequent periods of drought, researchers are increasingly working to make discoveries that can help plants adapt to prolonged water stress. Researchers from Boyce Thompson Institute and Cornell University have completed...
Dr. Jane Silverthorne, Chair of BTI’s Scientific Advisory Board and member of its Board of Directors, died unexpectedly on August 15, 2022. Jane’s rich biography and programmatic contributions have been remembered by UC Santa Cruz, where she held her first faculty...
Rates of anxiety and depression have been increasing around the world for decades, a trend that has been sharply exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. New research led by the Boyce Thompson Institute’s Frank Schroeder could ultimately lead to new therapeutics to help...
To help plant breeders speed crop improvement around the world, Lukas Mueller of the Boyce Thompson Institute worked with an international team of 57 people to create Breedbase, a database software that was described in the July issue of G3. “In the current era of...
Boyce Thompson Institute celebrated its 22nd annual Plant Genome Research Program (PGRP) summer internship program with an award ceremony at the George and Helen Kohut Symposium, which was held at the Institute on August 4. BTI also concluded the fourth year of its...
As the global population booms and climate change continues, improving crops to produce more food, use less resources like water and pesticides, and survive harsher environments will be needed to feed the planet sustainably. For example, fungal diseases are...
Tailoring a person’s diet or medicine based on their genomes has been a goal of the medical community for decades, but the strategy has not been widely successful because people metabolize chemicals differently. A drug may work differently for two patients because...
Shiqi Zhang spent many months sitting alone in a dark room, staring intently into the lens of a confocal microscope as she focused a laser beam on plant cells mounted on a glass slide. She was measuring changes in the intensity of fluorescent light emitted by the...
Genomes contain regions between protein-coding genes that produce lengthy RNA molecules that never give rise to a protein. These long intergenic non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs) are thought to have important functions, such as regulating responses to environmental change....
Wild relatives of crops are becoming increasingly valuable to plant researchers and breeders. During the process of domestication, crops tend to lose many genes, but wild relatives often retain genes that could be useful – such as genes that confer resistance to...
“And so we lift our gaze, not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.” – Amanda Gorman, from “The Hill We Climb.” In 2020, a group of researchers in Fay-Wei Li’s lab at the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) had done what many scientists dream of...
On May 31, Boyce Thompson Institute welcomed 41 of the country’s brightest undergraduate students from universities around the country to experience the life of a researcher for 10 weeks. Ten more research interns from local area high schools will join the Institute...
We are pleased to announce that three BTI researchers received their degrees during the Cornell University commencement ceremony on May 28. Congratulations to our newest alumni! Alex Ogbonna, Mueller lab, PhD in Plant Breeding & Genetics, Dissertation title:...
Greg Martin, Boyce Schulze Downey Professor at the Boyce Thompson Institute and Professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science (SIPS) at Cornell University, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Martin is one of 150 new members announced on May...
As a postdoctoral research associate in the lab of BTI faculty member Frank Schroeder, Max Helf saw his labmates continually struggle when they were analyzing data. So, he decided to do something about it and developed a free, open-source app called Metaboseek, which...
After 48 years of performing molecular biology research, including 22 years at Boyce Thompson Institute, Professor Dan Klessig retired on December 31. The former BTI President will remain associated with the Institute as an Emeritus Professor. A self-described “farmer...
Most of us are familiar with “spinach teeth,” the harmless but gritty-chalky mouthfeel caused by the vegetable. A team of researchers from Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) and six Chinese universities has identified genes in spinach that regulate its concentration of...
The humble quillworts are an ancient group of about 250 small, aquatic plants that have largely been ignored by modern botanists. A group of researchers, led by Boyce Thompson Institute’s Fay-Wei Li, have sequenced the first quillwort genome and uncovered some secrets...
Buying tomatoes and other fruits in the grocery store is always a gamble because, however good they look, they are often firm but lack flavor. A group of plant scientists has discovered a gene that could increase the odds that future store-bought tomatoes stay firm...
