How Plants Fine-tune Their Natural Chemical Defenses
Sunday, September 7, 2008 - 12:28
in Biology & Nature
Even closely related plants produce their own natural chemical cocktails, each set uniquely adapted to the individual plant's specific habitat. Comparing anti-fungals produced by tobacco and henbane, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies discovered that only a few mutations in a key enzyme are enough to shift the whole output to an entirely new product mixture.