North Carolina, March 13 -- Researchers have published a simple approach that increases the accuracy of techniques used to understand how environmental factors, such as temperature, impact gene activity in plants.

"There are really two contributions here," says Colleen Doherty, corresponding author of a paper on the work and an associate professor of molecular and structural biochemistry at North Carolina State University. "First, we're raising the visibility of a problem that many of us in the plant research community were unfamiliar with, as well as highlighting the solution. Second, we've demonstrated that addressing this problem can make a significant difference in our understanding of gene activity in plants."

The technology at que...