News & events
News
Scientists from ANU are drawing inspiration from plants to develop new techniques to separate and extract valuable minerals, metals and nutrients from resource-rich wastewater.
Not content with the challenging conditions for crop production here on Earth, Associate Professor Caitlin Byrt is lending her expertise to an ambitious space mission to grow plants on the moon.
ANU will lend its unique expertise in plant biology to an ambitious mission led by Australian space start-up Lunaria One that aims to grow plants on the moon by as early as 2025.
A team of researchers from the ANU Research School of Biology and CSIRO has been awarded more than $1 million to develop technology that harvests valuable resources from our wastewater.
Using cutting-edge technology, biologist Dr Benjamin Schwessinger from The Australian National University (ANU) is helping to protect the biosecurity of Australia's unique flora and agricultural industry.
Scientists from ANU and James Cook University have identified an "exquisite" natural mechanism that helps plants limit their water loss with little effect on carbon dioxide intake - an essential process for photosynthesis, plant growth and crop yield.
Events
C4 photosynthesis, a carbon concentrating mechanism, evolved as an adaptation to improve photosynthetic CO2 assimilation in terrestrial plants under conditions of low CO2, increased temperatures and varying rainfall patterns.
Cell-to-cell communication is essential for the co-ordination of responses in all multicellular organisms. One mechanism plants employ as defence against pathogens is restriction of cell-to-cell communication by plasmodesmata closure during infection.
In plants, microRNAs (miRNAs) are short non-coding RNAs of approximately 20-24 nt in length which are involved in post-transcriptional regulation of genes controlling many fundamental biological pathways.
Specialised metabolites are one of the major means of how microbes and sessile organisms express extended phenotype for the selective advantage of the organisms —or, more fundamentally, their genes.
Natural capital describes the stocks of renewable and non-renewable resources (e.g. plants, animals, air, water, soils and minerals) that produce flows of benefits to people.
Source-to-sink allocation of, and sink-to-sink competition for, photoassimilates, mainly in the form of sucrose, play a key role in determining energy and resource distribution in plants for growth and reproduction.