Cucumber peel color can decide whether a fruit looks fresh, desirable, and worth buying. In many markets, especially in northern China, darker green cucumbers are preferred over paler ones.

The sunlight-collecting organelles known as chloroplasts solve a packing problem: how to optimize photosynthesis without sustaining damage from dangerously intense rays. Living on light is a dangerous ...

A group of Japanese researchers has confirmed that Rapaza viridis, a single-celled eukaryote, sends proteins derived from its own genes to chloroplasts it takes from green algae to have them conduct ...

A heretofore unknown molecular mechanism helps plants save water in extreme drought and intense sunlight. A research team at Heidelberg University's Center for Organismal Studies (COS), in cooperation ...

SOME SEA slugs are kleptomaniacs. Elysia crispata, a species of these marine molluscs found in the western Atlantic and the Caribbean, is among the most notorious. When the slugs eat algae, their ...

A certain species of sea slug steals chloroplasts from algae and houses its contraband in special organelles that it can raid for food in times of need “It was the wildest thing that we had seen,” ...

A recent study by Chinese scientists has revealed the intricate molecular machinery driving energy exchange within chloroplasts, shedding light on a key event in the evolution of plant life. Led by ...

Scientists found molecular evidence supporting the idea that chloroplasts originated as energy-generating organelles and only later evolved to support carbon assimilation in plant cells. One of the ...

Chloroplasts, the parts of cells that allow plants and algae to photosynthesize, are thought to have originated more than 1 billion years ago, when photosynthetic cyanobacteria lived symbiotically ...

The ability of plants to convert sunlight into food is an enviable superpower. Now, researchers have shown they can get animal cells to do the same thing. Photosynthesis in plants and algae is ...

Benjamin holds a Master's degree in anthropology from University College London and has previously worked in the fields of psychedelic neuroscience and mental health. Benjamin holds a Master's degree ...