Opinion: Ménage-à-trois hypothesis of plastid endosymbiosis ($)
Plant Science Research Weekly, ResearchIt is well established that plastids are derived from the primary endosymbiosis of an ancient cyanobacterium into a eukaryotic host cell, but this understanding does not explain all of the evidence, nor does it explain how the nascent endosymbiont evaded the host cell's defense mechanisms. Recently,…
Genomic inferences of domestication events are corroborated by written records in Brassica rapa ($)
Plant Science Research Weekly, Research0 Comments
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There are many subspecies of Brassica rapa [including turnip (subsp. rapa) pak choi (subsp. chinensis) and Chinese cabbage (subsp. pekinensis)] but the relationships between the subspecies has remained uncertain. Qi et al. sequenced 143 accessions, including some subspecies for the first time. They then…
Signatures of adaptation in the weedy rice genome
Plant Science Research Weekly, ResearchCrop domestication has been accompanied by the evolution of aggressive weedy crop relatives that compete for resources and make weed management a challenge. By using whole-genome sequencing of the two most commonly found weedy rice strains in the US (SH and BHA), and comparing them with the genomes of…
Review: Ancient plant DNA in lake sediments
Plant Science Research Weekly, ResearchFossils have been extremely useful in efforts to reconstruct the past, but recently the analysis of ancient DNA (aDNA) has taken off. Parducci et al. describe the value of lake sediments as sources of ancient DNA from which to gain insights into the plant populations of ancient times. Lakes are found…
Review: Insights into plant adaptation from transcriptomics and proteomics studies
Plant Science Research Weekly, ResearchOmics approaches have helped shed light on how plants relate to their environment and how they respond to changes in it. Although still relatively underutilized, comparative transcriptomics and proteomics approaches also can be applied to study mechanisms of plant adaptation. Voelckel et al. discuss…
Could plants be sentient?
Plant Science Research Weekly, ResearchSentience, the capacity to feel subjectively, is considered limited to organisms that have a nervous system and a centralized brain. Plants, therefore, have been excluded from this group based on: lack of a transmission mechanism like the animal nervous system; lack of a brain; simplicity; and inability…
Hierarchically aligning 10 legume genomes establishes a family-level genomics platform
Plant Science Research Weekly, ResearchMany legumes are important crops, and to date ten legume genomes have been sequenced, including soybean, common bean, mung bean, and two species of wild peanut. Wang et al. used hierarchical comparative genomics analysis of the ten legume genomes, which enabled them to detected gene colinearity between…
Living on the edge: conservation genetics of seven thermophilous plant species in a high Arctic archipelago
Plant Science Research Weekly, ResearchThe Arctic provides numerous opportunities to study how climate change and isolation affect plant populations. Birkeland et al. queried the genetic diversity within isolated populations of seven heat-loving (thermophilous) species in the high Arctic (74° – 81° N) Svalbard Archipelago, near the well-known…
Letter: Picking up the ball at the K/Pg boundary: Ancient polyploidies as a spandrel of asexuality
Plant Science Research Weekly, ResearchRoughly 66 million years ago Earth was hit by a huge asteroid, resulting in climate changes that led to mass extinctions, most famously of the non-avian dinosaurs. This catastrophic event, which marks the boundary between the Cretaceous (K) and Paleogene (Pg) periods, also caused widespread mass extinctions…