Organisms’ immune systems are constantly trying to detect and boot freeloaders. No living thing is particularly willing to give up its hard earned resources to just any moocher that comes along, so all parasites must find a way past their hosts’ defenses and survive incessant attacks. Some constantly disguise themselves to move about undetected, while others mysteriously slip under the radar. Now, in a paper published this month in Nature, researchers have discovered one parasitic plant has evolved a remarkable way to survive: it creates small chunks of RNA to silence its hosts’ genes. Continue reading “Floral Hackers: Plant Parasites Use MicroRNAs to Shut Down Host Genes”
