In biology, matters are rarely either good or bad; oftentimes they may be both at once (albeit usually for different organisms). Take for instance hydrogen cyanide, which is widely regarded to be rather bad since it is a potent poison that can kill most living things by ‘interfering’ (that’s a euphemism!) with respiration. However, it [...]
Anne Osterrieder has a new series on her blog called Faces of plant cell biologists, where we are asked a series of questions. So far, it has featured Charlotte Carroll (also an AoBBlog.com guest author here), Chris Hawes and Kentaro Tamura, who all answer Anne’s questions is surprisingly contrasting but complementary ways. Today, I have been [...]
What happened 670 million years ago? Can’t remember? Doesn’t matter, that’s why we have palaeobotanists. Palaeobotanists that is whose science it seems has been much under-appreciated amidst the high expectations, hope and hype surrounding modern methods of inferring evolutionary information from so-called ‘molecular clocks’. Or at least that appears to be the sub-text to the [...]
This article provides an overview of the development and structure of spore and pollen walls in the major plant groups and summarises progress in our understanding of the molecular genetics underpinning spore/pollen evolution and development.
The rate of molecular evolution of Tricyrtis plant groups as a model system was estimated. The outcome further highlights the importance of conserving biodiversity in a rapidly changing Earth environment. This phylogenetic analyses of Tricyrtis with its high endemism in north-east Asia sheds light on processes of speciation processes.
We put The natural history of pollination and mating in bird-pollinated Babiana (Iridaceae) live on the Annals of Botany site this week. It’s been covered in the press, notably by the BBC, Plant has evolved a specialist bird perch, and the CBC, Bird perch helps plants have better sex. We’ve put out a press release, [...]
The origins of rice have been cast in a new light by research published in PLoS Genetics. By reconciling two theories, the authors show that the domestication of rice occurred at least twice independently but with extensive “borrowing” between two subspecies, Oryza sativa indica and Oryza sativa japonica, the southern and northern varieties of rice [...]
Twentieth-century scientist and modern-day Promethean Stanley Lloyd Miller was famous for his ‘spark of life’ experiments of the 1950s. In those studies he subjected a mixture of H2S, CH4, NH3 and CO2 to electrical discharge in an attempt to mimic conditions on the early Earth prior to the evolution of life. However, it seems that [...]
I often quote the last paragraph of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species: “It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds … and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced [...]
Bacteria and other microorganisms contribute greatly to the Earth’s biomass as they form the bottom of the food chain and orchestrate the cycling of carbon, nitrogen, and flow of other nutrients through the ecosystem. They are the ‘dark matter’ of life and may also hold the key to various global problems facing our society e.g. [...]