Reflections on Jay Jacobson (1934 – 2022)

We at BTI were sad to hear of the passing of Dr. Jay Jacobson, a plant physiologist who spent 35 years conducting research in the Environmental Biology group at the Institute. During the 1960s and 1970s, scientists began to recognize that the most serious and...

Closeup photo of Jay Jacobson looking at leaves in a greenhouse.

Reflections on Vladimir “Vlado” Macko (1930 – 2022)

We at BTI were sad to hear of the passing of Dr. Vladimir “Vlado” Macko, a plant biochemist who spent nearly 30 years conducting research at BTI. After joining BTI to work on rust fungi in December 1969, Macko and his colleagues discovered the chemical nature of...

Closeup black and white photo of Vlado Macko from 1993.

PlantGENE to catalyze plant biotechnology improvement

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...

A group photo of, from left to right, Heidi Kaeppler, Bill Gordon-Kamm, Wayne Parrott, Veena Veena, Joyce Van Eck and Keunsub Lee. They are standing outside in front of a green bush.

Worms as a model for personalized medicine

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...

A closeup photo of Frank Schroeder next to a microscope.

The missing links: Finding function in lincRNAs

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...

A closeup photo of Kyle Palos looking at some small, flowering Arabidopsis plants in a growth chamber.

Wild tomato genome will benefit domesticated cousins

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...

Closeup photo of a Solanum lycopersicoides fruit growing on a plant. The fruit is about the size of a blueberry and yellow.

New species of alga named for poet Amanda Gorman

“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...

Medium shot of Amanda Gorman speaking at a lectern.

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