If you happen to come across plants of the Balanophoraceae family in a corner of a forest, you might easily mistake them for fungi growing around tree roots. Their mushroom-like structures are ...

Using the model Orobanchaceae parasitic plant Phtheirospermum japonicum, scientists from Nagoya University and other research institutes from Japan have discerned the molecular mechanisms underlying ...

Dodder, a parasitic plant that causes major damage to crops in the US and worldwide every year, can silence the expression of genes in the host plants from which it obtains water and nutrients. This ...

Understanding the communications weaponry system of dodder, which operates much like a computer virus, could provide researchers with a method to engineer parasite-resistant plants. Dodder, a ...

The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. A parasitic bacterium has found a way to turn its host plant sterile, forcing it to grow leaves ...

There are plants which, like the vampires of Halloween legend, suck the “blood” of other plants. Parasitic plants take nutrients and water from other plants by extracting them from their host through ...

Some parasitic plants can ‘steal’ genetic information from their hosts through horizontal gene transfer, which they then use to make themselves a better parasite. Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is a ...

Sorghum crops in sub-Saharan Africa suffer heavy losses from the parasitic plant witchweed (Striga hermonthica). A new study shows how soil microbes can help protect sorghum from this pest and could ...

Parasites are the ultimate moochers, earning a living by stealing hard-earned nutrients from their hosts. Now, a new study in plants suggests that parasites sometimes give something back: foreign ...

Pathogens can alter their hosts, for example malaria parasites can make humans more attractive to mosquitoes, but how they do it has remained a mystery. Scientists from the John Innes Centre on ...

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) between sexually unrelated species has recently been documented for higher plants, but mechanistic explanations for HGTs have remained speculative. We show that a ...