Tag: Evolution

In angiosperms, pollen germination leads to a period of extensive polarized growth of the pollen tube, which carries the sperm nuclei to the ovule. Studies of tip growth in both pollen tubes and root hairs have contributed to a descriptive model that involves polarized vesicle movement along the cytoskeleton…

This interesting and well-written review by Derbyshire and Raffaele takes a step back from the molecular interactions between plant and pathogen and discusses them in light of co-evolutionary processes. The review starts with a useful introduction and definition of concepts about “robustness” in…

Without doubt, Arabidopsis thaliana has thoroughly demonstrated its usefulness as a model species. In this interesting article by Mabry et al. (with an impressive author list!), the authors propose to expand the Arabidopsis toolkit to encompass its entire order – its family of families, the Brassicales.…

Land plants have enormous diversity; however we do not fully understand how this has arisen. In this review article James Clark discusses how genome dynamics and gene loss contribute to genome evolution and the generation of diversity and complexity. He explains how genome evolution is non-homogenous…

Understanding the genetic basis of local adaptation of a species is an important but thorny problem. Now that whole genomes are readily characterized, it’s not hard to see lots of differences between populations, but pulling meaning and demonstrating functional consequences out of those differences…

I highly recommend this excellent and accessible article by Borg et al. that provides an overview of the red macroalgae, which “may have been the first eukaryotic lineage to have evolved complex multicellularity”. It’s full of fascinating information: although 97% of red algal species are marine,…

Marchantia polymorpha, the common (but adorable) liverwort, has earned its spot in the ranks of very important plant model systems, joining Physcomitrium patens as representatives of the bryophyte clade. Many systems first characterized in Arabidopsis and other angiosperms are now being studied in these…

In many biology textbook, plant pathology is introduced through the historical context of the 1840s great potato famine, caused by colonial ideologies and a virulent pathogen. This causal agent, Phytophthora infestans, is an oomycete that is still present in the environment and causing outbreaks of late…