DIY productive failure: boosting performance in a large undergraduate biology course.

Students in first-year university courses often focus on mimicking application of taught procedures and fail to gain adequate conceptual understanding. One potential approach to support meaningful learning is Productive Failure (PF). In PF, the conventional instruction process is reversed so that learners attempt to solve challenging problems ahead of receiving explicit instruction.

Comparative transcriptome analysis of Arabidopsis thaliana infested by diamond back moth (Plutella xylostella) larvae reveals signatures of stress response, secondary metabolism, and signalling.

Background: Plants are exposed to attack from a large variety of herbivores. Feeding insects can induce substantial changes of the host plant transcriptome. Arabidopsis thaliana has been established as a relevant system for the discovery of genes associated with response to herbivory, including genes for specialized (i.