Tag: Evolution

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…