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"THE ABILITY TO SENSE and respond to a wide variety of mechanical stimuli—gravity, touch, osmotic pressure, or the resistance of the cell wall—is a critical feature of every plant cell, whether or not it is specialized for mechanotransduction." https://lnkd.in/dazh-wp View in LinkedIn

PREDATOR DEFENSE STIMULATED. "Repetitive touching enhanced resistance to fungus (Botrytis cinerea) infection and cabbage looper (Trichoplusia ni) infestation in a defense phytohormone jasmonate-dependent manner." https://lnkd.in/dDuN9mZ View in LinkedIn

ROSE COMPACTNESS. "Mechanical stress given to the upper part of the order 1 axis of young rose plants resulted in a reduction in axis length and an increase in the number of branching, leading to the compactness of the bush, a favorable horticultural trait." https://lnkd.in/dDuN9mZ View in LinkedIn

CHERRY ROOTS. "Effects of mechanical stress on trees have also been studied extensively. For instance, mechanical bending of the stem increased biomass allocation toward the root in wild cherry tree seedlings, avoiding the formation of poor root systems and the reduction of diameter growth of the trunk seen in mechanically untreated seedlings." https://lnkd.in/dDuN9mZ View in LinkedIn

NATURAL HARDENING. "Wind-induced mechanical stress increased resistance to an arthropod herbivore and a fungal pathogen in common bean." https://lnkd.in/dDuN9mZ View in LinkedIn

OTHER BEAN PLANTS. "Rubbed soybean plants exhibited reduction in stem elongation and frost resistance. Mechanically rubbed stems of common bean were hardened because of an increase in flexibility and acquired resistance to bending-caused breaking." https://lnkd.in/dDuN9mZ View in LinkedIn

HORTA THINKING. "The Star Trek episode in which the Enterprise crew finds Horta, a silicon-based alien life form that can't be detected with tricorders because it wasn't carbon-based." The answer you get depends on the questions you ask. https://lnkd.in/dGbsBxV View in LinkedIn

"SYDNEY BRENNER has expanded the genetic alphabet by adding two new nucleobases, Z and P, potentially making a wider array of genes and proteins." A whole new frontier. https://lnkd.in/dYQeS-P View in LinkedIn

HUGE STEP. "Holliger and his team engineered enzymes that helped six types of XNA to assemble and replicate genetic messages. The enzymes transcribed DNA into the various XNAs, then back into new DNA strands — with 95% accuracy or more. For the first time, this confirms that replication, heredity and evolution are possible in these alternative backbones." (XDNA = xeno-nucleic acids). https://lnkd.in/d7dNEeN View in LinkedIn

SYNTHETIC SPECIES. "Unlike the first synthetic cells made in 2010, in which Venter’s team at the J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla, California, copied an existing bacterial genome and transplanted it into another cell, the genome of the minimal cells is like nothing in nature. Venter says that the cell, which is described in a paper released on 24 March in Science, constitutes a brand new, artificial species." http://www.nature.com/news/minimal-cell-raises-stakes-in-race-to-harness-synthetic-life-1.19633 View in LinkedIn