Rafflesia is a biologically enigmatic species that is very rare in occurrence and possesses an extraordinary morphology. This parasitic plant produces a gigantic flower up to one metre in diameter with no leaves, stem or roots. However, little is known about the floral biology of this species especially at the molecular level. In an effort to address this issue, we have generated and characteri...

The contraction process of living Vorticella sp. has been investigated by image processing using a high-speed video camera. In order to express the temporal change in the stalk length resulting from the contraction, a damped spring model and a nucleation and growth model are applied. A double exponential is deduced from a conventional damped spring model, while a stretched exponential is newly ...

The L7/12 stalk of the large subunit of bacterial ribosomes encompasses protein L10 and multiple copies of L7/12. We present crystal structures of Thermotoga maritima L10 in complex with three L7/12 N-terminal-domain dimers, refine the structure of an archaeal L10E N-terminal domain on the 50S subunit, and identify these elements in cryo-electron-microscopic reconstructions of Escherichia coli ...

The heterotrimeric structure of kinesin-2 makes it a unique member of the kinesin superfamily; however, molecular details of the oligomer formation are largely unknown. Here we demonstrate that heterodimerization of the two distinct motor domains KLP11 and KLP20 of Caenorhabditis elegans kinesin-2 requires a dimerization seed of merely two heptads at the C terminus of the stalk. This heterodime...

The attractiveness of a plant to pollinators is dependent on both the number of flowers produced and the size of the petals. However, limiting resources often result in a size/number trade-off, whereby the plant can make either more flowers or larger flowers, but not both. If developmental genes underlying sepal and petal identity (some of which overlap) also influence size, then this shared ge...

This study reports effect of salinity on some growth attributes of two sugarcane cultivars at grand growth stage, in comparison with the control plants. In view of data presented here for different growth attributes, it is clear that responses of two varieties of sugarcane were different at different salinity levels. However, saline growth medium caused an overall reduction in growth in both th...

Kinesin is a dimeric motor with twin catalytic heads joined to a common stalk. Kinesin molecules move processively along microtubules in a hand-over-hand walk, with the two heads advancing alternately. Recombinant kinesin constructs with short stalks have been found to "limp", i.e., exhibit alternation in the dwell times of successive steps. Limping behavior implies that the molecular rearrange...