Word: rhizobia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...form compounds necessary for plant growth. Most other plants must obtain their nitrogen from natural and man-made fertilizers. But scientists are seeking to give more plants this nitrogen-fixing ability. At Utah's Brigham Young University, biologists are attempting to "infect" other species of plants with rhizobia. Scientists in England have isolated the segment of the rhizobial DNA that controls the nitrogen-fixing capability. Now they and other scientists are trying to incorporate this gene into the genetic material of plants like corn. These and other efforts to give grain plants the capability of nitrogen fixation could...
...Manhattan's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Thomas is also a gifted writer with wit, imagination and a bold, encouraging vision of both man and nature. His main theme is symbiosis, the intimate association between even the most dissimilar organisms. For example, he points out that bacteria called rhizobia live in the roots of bean plants and enable them to utilize the nitrogen in the soil; without these parasites the plants would die. There are also viruses-small, independent packets of nucleic acids -which Thomas believes may have helped man evolve by transmitting bits of the master molecule...
| 1 |