Plant and soil

I hope you enjoy the subject of molybdenum (Mo, atomic number 42, transition metal, group 6 and fifth period in the periodic classification, Nox ranging from 6 to -2). Whether you see any errors, or having suggestions and doubts, please feel free to be in contact. Molybdenum is required in small amounts by plants (micronutrient), for example, while the concentration of nitrogen in the dry matter of the plants is 1000 mmol / kg, the concentration of Mo is 0.001 mmol / kg. However Mo is part of cofactors that bind nitrate reductase and nitrogenase. These two enzymes are crucial for the assimilation of nitrogen by plants. Three-dimensional structure of nitrate reductase Nitrate reductase converts the nitrate that has been absorbed from the soil to nitrite which will later be converted to ammonium. Ammonium will be converted to glutamate by the GS-GOGAT path. Henceforth several amino acids can be formed. Nitrogenase is an enzyme found in bacteria that live in symb...

We gave a break in Natural Sciences today, soon we return to normal schedule, or not. I want to be brief with this thing. In this introduction I would just like to say that, for the most rushed and inattentive, perhaps the conflict of me may be the conflict of yourself, or of ourselves. Also, be warned that the rest may contain paragraphs not linked. In a room in the Orsay museum in Paris, people crowd and even promote a timid attempt to get a photo of a small portrait on the wall. Other people try to take selfies with the self-portrait made long ago by a person who lives his time without being famous and who between moments of sanity and madness created masterpieces. Whoever it is, Theo, the brother, must be very proud. About Vincent I don’t know, he wanted his friends close to him. Better believe it to be so. Vincent victim of his madness ... A crazy guy who produced works that went far beyond the paintings, his works speak for themselves, are expressions...

What powder is that? One of these days, I got these pictures from a friend, the guy has a very nice blog about health ( Portal esfera humana ), and he had a doubt: Medina, we've lost 2 orange trees here, what is this powder, what is it? It is a pest, a larva of a beetle (family Cerambycidae) that makes galleries inside the trunk and the branches of the plants, causing death to the plant when not controlled (and produces the sawdust). In addition to attacking the citrus (orange, lemon and etc.) it also attacks plants of avocado, plum, pear, peach, cherry, fig, guava and others. When it attacks the branches ( Diploschema rotundicolle ), one of the main control measures is basically to cut off these branches and burn them. So focus on the plants, if you have any branch drying, showing those holes and saw dust falling, eliminate them by burning them. Beware that the smoke produced by the burning of citrus plants can cause allergy in some people, as...

Producing food is not easy Probably many of you have seen this yellow triangle with this T inside, well, it is a product made with some transgenic ingredient (probably corn or soy). Have you heard anyone say anything about these foods? Did they good things or bad things about them? Better yet, have they told you why these plants are transgenic? To return to the subject, as it is in the heading of this text, to produce food is not easy and is expensive, there are diseases that attack the plants in the field, pest insects that cause enormous damages, there are also the invading weeds and many other factors they play against. Believe me, there is a lot that hinders the production of food. Many of the transgenic plants have artificially inserted genes that give them tolerance to diseases, reduce the attack of insect pests and make these plants tolerant to herbicides. Why tolerant to herbicides? Think of the extraordinarily simple scenario, there are 2 plants, one I want because...

Photo taken in the Australian outback in the Pilbara region of Western Australia in June 2016. We don't need to go very far to see soils with this coloration but what makes that soils here of Brazil and for example from the other side of the planet are so red? The answer lies in the presence of a mineral in the soil, the hematite (mineral rich in iron). Hematite is a mineral of red coloration and that when present in large amounts in the soil gives it the same strong coloration. Okay, but what makes the soil so rich in hematite? This question is deeper but I will try to be brief. Soils are formed by the degradation of pre-existing rocks. In this case, some soils may be formed of rocks already rich in hematite and other minerals (olivines, pyroxene, biotite, mica, etc.) that are rich in iron (mafic rocks). On the other hand even soils that are formed by rocks not so rich in iron can become very red as well. With the passing of geological ages some minerals are degraded (m...

Analysis of GCMS (gas chromatography with mass spectrometry) in different eucalypt clones in southern Bahia. These analyzes are time-consuming and sometimes complex, but they are very interesting because they show how the body's metabolism is in relation to some experimental treatment, natural event or etc. In the case it was studied how different clones of eucalyptus behave against very humid soils. This analysis is also used in studies even in humans. In a next post, I'll tell you a bit more about the technique used (GCMS), in few words this technique separates the molecules present in a sample, in case the samples were leaves. Examples of molecules present in the leaves are sugars (glucose, futose, sucrose and etc.), amino acids (tryptophan, alanine, phenylalanine and etc.), organic acids (Krebs cycle compounds) and other molecules (Some day in the future I'll talk about them). As for eucalyptus clones, there are many differences between plants that make them mo...