A Taiwanese scientist at Academia Sinica has announced that her research team has identified the gene — CIPK15 (CBL-interacting protein kinase) — that explains how rice can germinate and grow under water.
“The CIPK15 gene has been found as the key that guarantees rice’s flood-tolerant qualities,” said Yu Shu-may (余淑美), a researcher at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Molecular Biology.
The gene is the reason why 80 percent of the world’s rice is traditionally planted in submerged fields, saving the need to kill weeds and use pesticides, Yu said.
She expressed the hope that the discovery behind rice’s growth can help human beings cultivate more crops that are resistant to floods, drought, salt and hot or cold temperatures at a time when extreme weather conditions resulting from global climate change have become common and often lead to diminished crop yields.
Yu’s study was selected as the cover story for the current issue of the journal Science Signaling.
Lee Kuo-wei (李國維), the first author of the paper and the prime contributor to the rice genomics study, said the team’s research found that rice is the only crop that can survive in flooded fields because of the CIPK15 gene.
Most plants die when submerged in water because the diffusion of oxygen is limited, restricting aerobic metabolism and energy production.
However, rice seeds, when plunged under water, signal to the CIPK15 gene that an oxygen shortage exists, triggering SnRKIA, a multiple functional protein, to produce amylolytic enzymes that are then transformed into sugar.
This gives the plants the energy they need to grow under water, Lee said.
After the rice seedlings emerge from the water, they can take in more oxygen, allowing their roots to generate carbohydrates and energy under water, he said.
Other crops, such as barley, wheat and corn, or even weeds, cannot grow in water using this mechanism because they lack the specific gene, he said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS