Picking up on my elemental theme, fire has long been considered a major influence on evolution of the angiosperms, whether natural or anthropogenic conflagrations. This incendiary interaction has not been helped by plants themselves, which not only generate highly calorific and combustible dry matter but also provide the oxygen needed to permit their combustion. The [...]

The genome sizes of plants represent a key character often associated with other traits. Bai et al. use flow cytometry to provide prime C-values for 514 taxa. Most of these (407) are new reports, including 129 genera and five families extending over 390 angiosperms, two gymnosperms, ten monilophytes and five lycophytes. New family C-value maxima or [...]

ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase (AGPase), a key enzyme in starch biosynthesis, is comprised of large (LSU) and small (SSU) sub-units encoded by multiple paralogous genes in angiosperms. Corbi et al. investigate the patterns of molecular evolution of AGPase genes following duplications. They find that both coevolution among amino acid residues located in between-sub-unit interaction domains or within the [...]

I’ve learned a lot from a new article in AoB PLANTS, the Open Access sister Journal to Annals of Botany. It’s Green love talks; Cell-cell communication during double-fertilization in flowering plants by Tomokazu Kawashima and Frederic Berger and it shows how things get really interesting when simple analogies break down. The paper is a review [...]