{"id":552438,"date":"2018-12-05T15:00:01","date_gmt":"2018-12-05T19:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?guid=19d6c9e3a49a879805849f0f50d936bb"},"modified":"2018-12-05T15:00:01","modified_gmt":"2018-12-05T19:00:01","slug":"cereals-use-chemical-defenses-in-a-multifunctional-manner-against-different-herbivores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=552438","title":{"rendered":"Cereals use chemical defenses in a multifunctional manner against different herbivores"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A team of scientists from the University of Bern (Switzerland) and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology and their partners have characterized multiple functions of benzoxazinoids in wheat: The toxic form of the substances makes the plant directly resistant to lepidopteran larvae, whereas a less toxic form regulates indirect defense mechanisms against aphids. Scientists have identified the &#8220;switch&#8221; between these different functions as a methyltransferase enzyme, which is activated by caterpillar feeding. This switch enables wheat plants to adapt their defense response to different herbivores. A comparison with maize shows that a methyltransferase also regulates defense processes in maize against different pest insects. However, the two enzymes in wheat and maize have evolved independently from each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A team of scientists from the University of Bern (Switzerland) and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology and their partners have characterized multiple functions of benzoxazinoids in wheat: The toxic form of the substances makes the plant direc&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-552438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=552438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":552439,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552438\/revisions\/552439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=552438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=552438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=552438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}