Tag: Evolution

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…

Invertases catalyse the conversion of sucrose into glucose and fructose. In plants, invertases fall into two clades – the mitochondrially/plastid localized α clade and the cytoplasmically localized β clade. However, we do not fully understand how these clades evolved. Here Wan et al. identified 665…

In this fantastic, engaging paper, Hu et al. carries the reader from the origins of life on land through the dramatic uplift of the Tibetan plateau and into the modern age of climate change, all through the lens of the “enigmatic” Takakia moss. It’s enigmatic because it has features that are more…

Husbands et al. identify ligands and regulatory properties of the HD-ZIPIII START domain. By By Aman Y. Husbands (University of Pennsylvania) and Marja C.P. Timmermans (University of Tuebingen). Background: Development has been compared to a ball rolling down a hill. Cells initially have broad…

Song, Jin, Chen, He, Li, Tang, et al. establish that independent evolutionary processes in ancestral land plants led to homo- and heteromeric geranyl diphosphate synthases. Shuyan Song and Shan Lu School of Life Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China Background: Terpenoids are a…

This study by Turner et al. looks at the patterns of leaf and sporangia arrangement in early leafy plant species, questioning the widely held idea that these structures follow the Fibonacci sequence. The researchers investigated fossilized remains from the Early Devonian period. To evaluate the spatial…

This is one of those “straight into the textbook” stories. Kellenberger et al. investigated the unusual petal pigmentation pattern of a South African daisy Gorteria diffusa, which has petals with odd lumpy irregular spots that mimic female flies and enhance pollination through sexual deception. The…