TB66 - Adjusting Plant Defenses

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Following on last week’s episode, plants contain a family of genes called “R genes” that play important roles in resistance to disease. They are part of an evolutionary arms race between plants and pathogens.  Matt Helm is a graduate student at Indiana University in Roger Innes’ lab. They are working on reworking the networks that sense pathogens, hoping to adapt their sensitivity to threats not innately sensed. In other words, putting different different bait on the mousetrap in the interest of catching a different pest with the same hardware.


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