Recent Posts

Review. Great moments in evolution: the conquest of land by plants ($) (Curr Opin Plant Biol)

Plant occupation of land was a crucial step in evolution, without which life as we know it today would not exist. Stefan Rensing takes us on an evolutionary journey, discussing the advent of photosynthesis in cyanobacteria and eukaryotic algae, which led to atmospheric oxygen, to plant terrestrialization,…

Review: Relative symbiont input and the lichen symbiotic outcome ($) (Curr Opin Plant Biol)

Lichen are quite special, as they don’t exist independently of their partnership.  Lichen are composed of a fungal partner and a photosynthetic partner (the algal or cyanobacterial photobiont), and these partnerships have evolved independently many times.  Spribille provides an overview of some of…

The subgenomes of polyploid plants evolve at different rates (Plant Cell)

Polyploidy can result either through genome doubling followed by intraspecific crosses, or when two genomes from independent species hybridize, leading to autopolyploidy, or allopolyploidy, respectively. Polyploidy is an important evolutionary tool; the resultant redundancy from the duplication of genes…

Evolutionary history resolves global organization of root functional traits ($) (Nature)

Roots differ in their form and function, as they need to compete for water and nutrients in the wide range of environment. Although we are starting to understand some adaptive aspects of individual root morphology features, the adaptive features of root organization are still poorly understood. Ma and…

A genome for gnetophytes and early evolution of seed plants (Nature Plants)

For decades, the Gnetophyte lineage has puzzled plant scientists in its correct phylogenetic placement. When taxonomists largely focused on morphological characteristics before the advent of molecular biology, it made sense to treat these apparently intermediate species as a transitional group between…

Review. The coming of age of EvoMPMI: evolutionary molecular plant-microbe interactions across multiple timescales

Often, a wide gap exists between evolutionary research, that is focused on theoretical approaches and organism evolution across multiple timescales, and molecular research aspiring to solve mechanistic puzzles of how particular systems work. Plant Biology is no exception to this, and much can be learnt…

Conservation of Genomic Imprinting during Wheat Polyploidization

Yang et al. discover conservation of genomic imprinting between closely related Triticum and Aegilops species. https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.17.00837 By Guanghui Yang and Mingming Xin Background: Genomic imprinting causes genes to be differentially expressed depending on their parent-of-origin, which…

Genetic conservation, turnover and innovation across the genus Oryza (Nature Genetics)

In order to use wild rice relatives for future crop improvement, the differences and similarities between wild and domesticated genomes need to be understood. Stein and colleagues sequenced the genomes of two domesticated varieties and seven wild species, unraveling 15 million years of evolutionary history…

Duplicate Genomes Evolved Differently in Maize and Soybean

Zhao et al. demonstrate that duplicated genomes in maize and soybean followed distinct trajectories over millions of years https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.17.00595 By Meixia Zhao, Biao Zhang, Damon Lisch, and Jianxin Ma Background: Over evolutionary time, many organisms, particularly plants, have periodically…