Over the past 30 years, more than 260 apparently healthy villagers in Yunnan Province, southwest China, have died suddenly of an unknown cause. Yunnan Sudden Unexplained Death (SUD) often strikes in time-space clusters during the rainy season, from June to August, in villages between 1800 and 2600 m above sea level. The state and local governments attached great importance to this situation and...
As two ubiquitous and important components in terrestrial ecosystems, parasitic plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi have been extensively studied in the past, but in most cases separately. Recent findings suggest that plant parasitism and AM associations have some interesting parallels and may be modulated bysimilar mechanisms. Despite the small but increasing number of efforts to test...
After being awarded for the first prize of Yunnan Natural Science in 2007, the team led by the professor Gong Xun has made new progress in research on conservation genetics of endangered plants. The method of SNPs was used in the study of genetic diversity and genetic differentiation of Cycas debaoensis which is distributed on earth piled hills and rock hills, and the result showed obvious gene...
The genus Salvia, one of the biggest genera in the medicinally important family Labiatae, is a rich source of diversity diterpenoids with attractive bioactivities such as tanshinone IIA, salvinorin A, and salvicine, et al. Many species of this genus such as S. miltiorrhiza, S. trijuga, S. yunnanensis, S. przewalskii, and S. prionitisare used as folk medicines to treat a wide variety of ailments.
Compared to their counterparts in animals, the mitochondrial (mt) genomes of angiosperms exhibit a number of unique features, such as expanded genome size, a generally low rate of molecular evolution, and frequent structure rearrangement via recombination. However, unraveling angiosperm mt genomes evolution is hindered by the few completed genomes, and the established sequencing approaches are ...
N-acyl homoserine-lactones (AHLs) are bacterial quorum-sensing signaling molecules that regulate population density. Recent evidences demonstrate their roles in plant defense responses and root development. H2O2, nitric oxide (NO) and cyclic GMP (cGMP) are essential messengers that participate in various plant physiological processes, but how these messengers modulate the plant response to AHL ...
Under the support of a joint foundation key project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Yunnan Provincial People's Government, a program for Science and Technology Development of Yunnan Province and a major project of the National Natural Science Foundation, researchers of KIB achieved a series of results in study, development and utilization of higher fungi. They publi...
Impressive reports of increased forest cover mask a focus on non-native tree crops that could damage the ecosystem, says XU Jianchu.
In the United Nations' 2011 International Year of Forests, China is heralded as a superstar. Almost single-handedly, the country has halted long-term forest loss across Asia, and even turned it into a net gain. Since the 1990s, China has planted more than 4 mi...
A new Himalaya-Hengduan Mountains endemic genus, Parasyncalathium (Asteraceae, Cichorieae, Lactucinae) is described. Parasyncalathium is based on Syncalathium souliei, originally placed in Lactuca sect. Aggregatae, as L. souliei, then later moved to Syncalathium.
