Genetics

URBANA, Ill. – Pumpkin growers dread the tiny tan scabs that form on their fruit, each lesion a telltale sign of bacterial spot disease. The specks don’t just mar the fruit’s flesh, they provide entry points for rot-inducing fungus and other pathogens that can destroy pumpkins and other cucurbits from the inside out. Either way, farmers pay the price, with marketable yields reduced by as much as 90%.

New mutations to the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 are emerging, including a more-infectious variant first found in the United Kingdom, even as vaccines containing bits of viral genetic material are beginning distribution. Gustavo Caetano-Anollés, a professor in the Department of Crop Sciences and a member of the Carl R.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — In 1533, the Bom Jesus – a Portuguese trading vessel carrying 40 tons of cargo including gold, silver, copper and more than 100 elephant tusks – sank off the coast of Africa near present-day Namibia. The wreck was found in 2008, and Department of Animal Sciences researchers say they now have determined the source of much of the ivory recovered from the ship.

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URBANA, Ill. -- An international research team has sequenced the full genome of an ornamental variety of miscanthus, a wild perennial grass emerging as a prime candidate for sustainable bioenergy crops.

The genome project — led by scientists at the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Bioenergy Research Center — provides a road map for researchers exploring new avenues to maximize the plant’s productivity and decipher the genetic basis for its desirable traits.

URBANA, Ill. – Since COVID-19 began its menacing march across Wuhan, China, in December 2019, and then across the world, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has taken a “whatever works” strategy to ensure its replication and spread. But in a new study published in Evolutionary Bioinformatics, University of Illinois researchers and students show the virus is honing the tactics that may make it more successful and more stable.

URBANA, Ill. – Representing some of the most troublesome agricultural weeds, waterhemp, smooth pigweed, and Palmer amaranth impact crop production systems across the U.S. and elsewhere with ripple effects felt by economies worldwide. In a landmark study, scientists have published the most comprehensive genome information to date for all three species, marking a new era of scientific discovery toward potential solutions.   

URBANA, Ill. – Genetically speaking, the loaf of bread you stress-baked during the COVID-19 shutdown is more complex than you think. Wheat’s 16 billion genes, organized in not one but three semi-independent genomes, can overlap or substitute for one another, making things extremely tricky for geneticists trying to enhance desirable traits in the world’s most widely grown crop.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Researchers often study the genomes of individual organisms to try to tease out the relationship between genes and behavior. A new study of Africanized honey bees reveals, however, that the genetic inheritance of individual bees has little influence on their propensity for aggression. Instead, the genomic traits of the hive as a whole are strongly associated with how fiercely its soldiers attack.

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Crop sciences professor Gustavo Caetano-Anollés and graduate student Fizza Mughal used a bioinformatics approach to reconstruct the evolutionary history of metabolic networks.

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URBANA, Ill. – A team including scientists from the University of Illinois has identified the ways in which glyphosate-resistant waterhemp has emerged in corn and soybean fields in southwestern Ontario.