Ethanol is a naturally occurring substance resulting from the fermentation by yeast of fruit sugars. The association between yeasts and angiosperms dates to the Cretaceous, and dietary exposure of diverse frugivorous taxa to ethanol is similarly ancient. Ethanol plumes can potentially be used to localize ripe fruit, and consumption of low-concentration ethanol within fruit may act as a feeding ...

OBJECTIVES Use of alternative medicine to control oral streptococci is a new topic worthy of further investigation. This study aimed to elucidate the dose-dependent anti-bacterial activity of crude aqueous extract of ripe Morinda citrifolia L. (Family: Rubiaceae) fruits against oral streptococci i.e. Streptococcus mutans and Streptococcus mitis, that cause dental caries in humans. METHODS Fre...

Chronic exposure of HIT-T15 cells to supraphysiologic glucose concentration diminishes insulin gene expression and decreased binding of two critical insulin gene transcription factors, STF-1 and RIPE-3b1 activator. To distinguish whether these changes are caused by glucose toxicity or beta cell exhaustion, HIT-T15 cells grown from passage 75 through 99 in media containing 11.1 mM glucose were s...

The evolution of trichromatic colour vision by the majority of anthropoid primates has been linked to the efficient detection and selection of food, particularly ripe fruits among leaves in dappled light. Modelling of visual signals has shown that trichromats should be more efficient than dichromats at distinguishing both fruits from leaves and ripe from unripe fruits. This prediction is tested...

To achieve full ripening, climacteric fruits, such as tomato require synthesis, perception and signal transduction of the plant hormone ethylene. The nonripening phenotype of the dominant Green-ripe (Gr) and Never-ripe 2 (Nr-2) mutants of tomato is the result of reduced ethylene responsiveness in fruit tissues. In addition, a subset of ethylene responses associated with floral senescence, absci...

A recent study has discovered a novel extended phenotype of a nematode which alters its ant host to resemble ripe fruit. The infected ants are in turn eaten by frugivorous birds that disperse the nematode's eggs.

The preparation for DNA replication initiation is tightly linked to cell-cycle progression, ensuring that replication occurs only once per cycle. The time is ripe for a molecular dissection of the links between the two processes.

The time is ripe: A general theoretical framework based on force-transformed potential energy surfaces rationalizes the intriguing results of recent experiments in the emerging field of covalent mechanochemistry.