Tag Archives: freezing

Plants Unpack Winter Coats When Days Get Shorter

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Mechanisms that protect plants from freezing are placed in storage during the summer and wisely unpacked when days get shorter.

In the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Michael Thomashow, University Distinguished Professor of molecular genetics, demonstrates how the CBF (C-repeat binding factor) cold response pathway is inactive during warmer months when days are long, and how it’s triggered by waning sunlight to prepare plants for freezing temperatures. (more…)

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Freezing Technique Exposes Molecule-to-Molecule Attachments

Researchers at Yale University have developed a new way of exposing the atomic attachments that keep complex molecules in precise alignment. The new method could provide insight into the mechanics of a variety of molecular structures, potentially aiding efforts to manipulate them for drug discovery and other purposes.

“The method appears likely to become a central tool for the characterization of processes that depend on supramolecular associations,” said Mark Johnson, a Yale chemistry professor and the principal investigator of the technique, which is described in a paper published this month in the journal Science. Supramolecular associations are interactions taking place between molecules, rather than within them. (more…)

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