A team of researchers from the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) has discovered a distinct group of bacteria that may help fungi and plants acquire soil nutrients. The findings could point the way to cost-effective and eco-friendly methods of enriching soil and improving...
A BTI-led team has identified genes enabling peaches and their wild relatives to tolerate stressful conditions – findings that could help the domesticated peach adapt to climate change. The study, co-led by Boyce Thompson Institute faculty member Zhangjun Fei,...
Dick Staples was an essential member of BTI and the broader plant science community for more than 70 years, from his early days as a graduate student, decades as a faculty member, to his most recent role as an Emeritus Professor. With his passing on January 15, two...
Thousands of years ago, people in the region now known as South America began domesticating Solanum pimpinellifolium, a weedy plant with small, intensely flavored fruit. Over time, the plant evolved into S. lycopersicum – the modern cultivated tomato. Although today’s...
The fabled Silk Road – the 4,000-mile stretch between China and Western Europe where trade flourished from the second century B.C. to the 14th century A.D. – is responsible for one of our favorite and most valuable fruits: the domesticated apple (Malus domestica)....
As I’m writing this, tomorrow is the first day of my final year of college. Even as a senior, I can feel a little bit of nervous anticipation creeping in. There’s so much potential in a beginning. Anything can happen. So much left to learn and so little time to learn...
Plant viruses in the Luteoviridae family devastate many crop varieties, including potatoes, small grains and cotton. The viruses are spread by sap-sucking aphids, which transmit the pathogen into a plant’s vasculature as they feed. Unfortunately, no adequate...
Plant science research has tremendous potential to address pressing global issues including climate change, food insecurity and sustainability. However, without sustained investment in plant science, the necessary research to generate innovative discoveries that solve...
Bacterial speck disease, which reduces both fruit yield and quality, has been a growing problem in tomatoes over the last five years. Because the culpable bacterium, Pseudomonas syringae, prefers a cool and wet climate, crops in places such as New York State have been...
By the fourth week of BTI’s Professional Development Series, I was beginning to fall into a bit of a routine. Every Wednesday, I made myself a cup of tea, grabbed a blanket, and settled down to watch one of BTI’s scientists present their research. Over the weeks, I...
RNA perform a variety of functions in cells, helping with everything from regulating genes to building proteins. In recent years, it has become clear that chemical modifications to RNA help guide these functions, but only a handful of these modifications have been...
Boyce Thompson Institute is excited to welcome Magdalena Julkowska to Ithaca, where she becomes our newest Assistant Professor. Magda’s main research focus is how environmental stress affects plant development and architecture, and she also plans to build an automated...
For a long time, I’ve avoided thinking about grad school. It’s not too hard to do at my small, undergrad-only college. During my first few years, it simply didn’t seem relevant. I was focused on athletics, classwork, and research. Graduate studies seemed like a...
Congrats to Ascribe Bioscience for being awarded a $750,000.00 SBIR Phase II award from NSF. The proposed project seeks to develop a novel control for plant pathogens by leveraging a class of small, naturally occurring molecules that elicit specific immune responses...
On March 3, I thought I knew what my summer would be like. I had just been accepted into BTI’s summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. I imagined myself in a greenhouse surrounded by vegetation and scribbling in a lab notebook. I imagined...
While the past few months have disrupted all sense of normalcy, BTI researchers and staff have remained productive while working from home, or as parts of skeleton crews within the building. As the Institute uses a phased approach to slowly reopen our facilities, a...
We are pleased to announce that six BTI researchers received their degrees from Cornell University this spring. Congratulations to our newest alumni: Jason Hoki, Schroeder lab, PhD in Chemistry & Chemical Biology, Dissertation title: “Development of...
We would like to congratulate five BTI graduate students who are Spring 2020 Schmittau-Novak Grants Program recipients. Supported by a bequest from the estate of Jean Schmittau in honor of Joseph Novak, Cornell University Plant Biology Professor Emeritus, the...
In order to shift from water to land – a transition that still puzzles scientists – plants had to protect themselves from drying out and from ultraviolet (UV) radiation, and they had to develop structures to support themselves without the buoyancy provided by water....
Citrus greening disease, also called huanglongbing (HLB), is a bacterial infection of citrus trees that results in small, misshapen and sour fruits that are unsuitable for consumption, ultimately killing the tree. Because there is no cure, HLB is a major threat to the...
Alan Renwick’s research on the wormseed wallflower began in the 1980s, after a chance meeting with Tufts University professor Frances Chew at a Gordon conference. “I had decided to work on cabbage pests, because Ithaca is in a cabbage-growing area,” Renwick said....
Plant-derived chemicals called cardenolides have long been used to treat heart disease, and have shown potential as cancer therapies. But the compounds are very toxic, making it difficult for doctors to prescribe a dose that works without harming the patient. For...
Some 500 million years ago – when our continents were likely connected in a single land mass and most life existed underwater – hornworts were one of the first groups of plants to colonize land. But biologists have never understood much about the genetics of these...
Nearly everyone on Earth is familiar with corn. Literally. Around the world, each person eats an average of 70 pounds of the grain each year, with even more grown for animal feed and biofuel. And as the global population continues to boom, increasing the amount of...
Nematodes are tiny, ubiquitous roundworms that infect plant roots, causing more than $100 billion in crop damage worldwide each year. New research has found that plants manipulate the worms’ pheromones to repel infestations, providing insights into how farmers could...
We at BTI were deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Dr. Mary Clutter on December 8. Many know Mary from her time at the National Science Foundation, where she began as Program Director in the 1970s, working her way up to become Assistant Director for the...
People have used aspirin to treat pain, fever and inflammation for more than a century, and the drug is also used to reduce the risk of strokes, heart attacks and some cancers. An estimated 100 billion aspirin tablets are taken worldwide each year, but how it works is...
Groundcherries: a New Treat by Carol Bayles, Master Gardener, with input from Esperanza Shenstone, Boyce Thompson Institute Note: this article originally appeared in the Cornell Cooperative Extension Garden Post newsletter Most gardeners love to try new things and...
We would like to congratulate a pair of BTI faculty members who recently published high-impact research papers in the prestigious research journal Nature. Frank Schroeder and colleagues discovered the first clues on how gut health influences brain health. Published on...
When many people think of watermelon, they likely think of Citrullus lanatus, the cultivated watermelon with sweet, juicy red fruit enjoyed around the world as a dessert. Indeed, watermelon is one of the world’s most popular fruits, second only to tomato – which many...
Boyce Thompson Institute is happy to share that two of our faculty members recently appeared as guests on popular podcasts. The content of these podcasts illustrate the breadth of research being done at the Institute to help increase global food security, improve...
Hornworts are a little-studied, ancient group of plants with some very unique biology, including their methods of securing carbon and nitrogen. Unlocking these secrets may help researchers boost agricultural output and use less synthetic fertilizer, as well as provide...
Over-fertilization of agricultural fields is a huge environmental problem. Excess phosphorus from fertilized cropland frequently finds its way into nearby rivers and lakes. A resulting boom of aquatic plant growth can cause oxygen levels in the water to plunge,...
Boyce Thompson Institute celebrated its 19th 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 8. The PGRP focuses on training and inspiring...
Every day, people are exposed to myriad chemicals, both natural and synthetic. Some of these compounds may affect human physical development, but testing them directly on people would be grossly unethical. To get around this dilemma, researchers from Boyce Thompson...
Protecting crops from pests and pathogens without using toxic pesticides has been a longtime goal of farmers. Researchers at Boyce Thompson Institute have found that compounds from an unlikely source – microscopic soil roundworms – could achieve this aim. As described...
Boyce Thompson Institute is pleased to announce the hiring of three faculty members as part of its new and innovative “cluster hire” approach. Out of 113 applicants, the three people who will join BTI over the next year are: Magdalena (Magda) Julkowska, a postdoctoral...
On June 3, Boyce Thompson Institute welcomed 35 of the country’s brightest undergraduate students from universities around the country to experience the life of a researcher for 10 weeks. Eight more interns from area high schools will join the Institute for seven...
Aphids and the plant viruses they transmit cause billions of dollars in crop damage around the world every year. Researchers in Michelle Heck’s lab at the USDA Agricultural Research Service and Boyce Thompson Institute are examining the relationship at the molecular...
We are pleased to announce that seven Boyce Thompson Institute researchers received their PhD degrees during the Cornell University commencement ceremony on May 26. Congratulations to our newest alumni: Mariko Alexander, Heck lab, “Searching for the missing...
The Boyce Thompson Institute is pleased to announce that Olivia Gomez, a third-year undergraduate researcher in Michelle Heck’s lab, has placed fourth in the American Phytopathological Society’s Councilors’ Challenge. “Thank you to my mentor Michelle and to the...
Tomato breeders have traditionally emphasized traits that improve production, like larger fruits and more fruits per plant. As a result, some traits that improved other important qualities, such as flavor and disease resistance, were lost. Researchers from Boyce...
Maria Harrison, William H. Crocker Professor at Boyce Thompson Institute and Adjunct Professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science (SIPS) at Cornell University, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Harrison is one of 100 new members announced...
Graduate students and post docs would be wise to join groups that teach leadership and networking skills, which could help them compete for jobs outside of academia. So say three alumni who recently visited Boyce Thompson Institute for an all-day event organized by...
The Boyce Thompson Institute of Corvallis, Oregon? It almost happened. April 24 will mark the 40th anniversary of the dedication ceremony for BTI’s current facilities on the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, NY. The Institute’s researchers and staff will celebrate...
It is with great enthusiasm and pride that Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) will recognize the first recipients of BTI’s Alumni Recognition Awards during the 2019 PGS Career Symposium on April 26, 2019. Several highly qualified individuals were nominated for the...
As genome sequencing becomes cheaper and faster, resulting in an exponential increase in data, the need for efficiency in predicting gene function is growing, as is the need to train the next generation of scientists in bioinformatics. Researchers in the lab of Lukas...
David Stern, president of the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI), is delighted to announce that faculty member Zhangjun Fei has been promoted to Full Professor on February 27, 2019. Fei was evaluated on his achievements to date and the potential he possesses. Fei has made...
On January 29, 2019, Ascribe Bioscience became the first company based on technology developed at the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) to receive a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant. The agbiotech startup will use the $225,000 Phase I award from the...
It’s a dietary staple for millions of Africans, but cassava has traditionally received little attention from scientists and plant breeders in comparison to cash crops such as wheat and maize. However, researchers have recently been working to find cassava a scientific...
