Mick Kulikowski

Researchers at North Carolina State University have found a specific gene in corn that appears to be associated with resistance to two and possibly three different plant leaf diseases. In a paper published this week in Nature Genetics, NC State researchers pinpoint the gene – caffeoyl-CoA O-methyltransferase – that seems to confer partial resistance to Southern leaf blight and gray leaf spot, and possibly to Northern leaf blight, a trio of diseases that cripple corn plants worldwide. Finding out more about the mechanisms behind complex traits like disease resistance has the potential to help plant breeders build the best...

Bugs Bunny hasn’t aged a day since his cartoon debut in 1940, and he rarely wears glasses. He can play all nine positions on a baseball field – at once. He also consistently outwits gangsters, hunters and water fowl. That could be due to all the carrots he consumes. Carrots contain high quantities of carotenoids – plant pigments that have been shown to provide health benefits, including reduced risk of diseases such as eye disease. The orange carrot is the richest source of vitamin A in the American diet. Maybe the wily and youthful-looking rabbit has intuited for decades what can now be...

Editor’s note: WRAL Local Tech Wire publishes selected stories from the news services of various universities as part of its UniversityTech coverage. LTW is enhancing significantly its coverage of scientific and research efforts at regional universities where many of tomorrow’s discoveries are being made and the foundations of new companies are in the process of being created. RALEIGH, N.C. — Biochemists at North Carolina State University have answered a fundamental question of how important bacterial proteins make life-and-death decisions that allow them to function, a finding that could provide a new target for drugs to disrupt bacterial decision-making processes...