Death to dodder

Science News, August 16, 2008 by Rachel Ehrenberg

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The parasitic plant known as dodder really sucks. The vine (shown wrapped around a green stem) pierces the tissue of other plants, extracting water and nutrients. But it also consumes molecules that scientists could manipulate to design "attack RNA" that could interfere with dodder's growth and bring on its demise. Some RNA molecules siphoned from the host plant remain stable in dodder, traveling several centimeters within the parasite, Neelima Sinha of the University of California, Davis and colleagues report in an upcoming New Phytologist. "This is very exciting from the point of view of controlling parasitic plants," says James Westwood of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.