Superman had the yellow sun of earth, spiderman had a radioactive spider-bite, but what about superweeds, where does their super power (surviving application of Round-up/glyphosate) come from? To understand how superweeds survive, we first have to understand why normal weeds (the Jimmy Olsens and Lois Lanes of the plant world) die. <– last superhero reference [...]
Posts under ‘Plants’
Don’t judge the genetic diversity of a species by its cover
There are more differences in the genomes of two unrelated corn plants than between the genomes of a human and a chimpanzee (two species separated by 3.5 million years of evolution). On the other hand, two unrelated human beings, members of the same species, have more than four times as many genetic differences as two [...]
Two classical maize genes, synteny, and the mystery of the missing gene
Colored aleurone1 and Purple plant1 are both genes with long histories in maize research and are involved in the regulation of anthocyanin biosynthesis. The mutant version of purple plant1 does exactly what it sounds like. (In the proper genetic background) it has plants producing anthocyanin (a purple plant pigment) everywhere, resulting in purple plants. The mutant form of colored aleurone1 was identified from a mutant that changed the color of individual corn kernels. The two genes are also duplicates (homeologs) resulting from the maize whole genome duplication. More details, pictures of the mutant plants, a quick and interesting syntenic analysis and the mystery of the missing gene, in the full post.
Oliva Judson’s Salute to Grasses
Talking up Olivia Judson (an English evolutionary biologist who has the trick of getting the general public excited about biology), her post on why grasses are so important in particular, and, for some reason bird’s teeth (they wanted to slip in somewhere).
The Most Studied Genes of Maize (and why we love kernel phenotypes)
Of the fifteen most studied genes in maize (cool graphical table included), thirteen can have kernel phenotypes when mutated. Why? Because of what a geneticist can tell from looking at a single ear of corn that shows such a mutant phenotype (details inside).
Corn Smut
And no that doesn’t mean corn pornography*. Corn smut, or Ustilago maydis, is a fungus that infects corn plants. It’s an old acquantance from my days working in the field. We always used to tell the new hires that corn smut was a rare delicacy in some countries (as we’d been told ourselves), but this [...]
Plant Links of the Day: Diverse Citrus, Extinct Cucurbits, and more
A genomicist’s post on citrus, a ecologist’s post on an extinct cucurbit known only from a single 175 year old specimen, and “Sex, Drugs, and Paleo-botany!”
The Taste of Tomatoes + Tomato Mutagenesis
First, since I didn’t explicitly state it in my previous post, the paper on the longer lasting tomatoes developed by India’s National Institute for Plant Genome Research didn’t report any data on how the RNAi knock-down tomatoes actually taste.* The tomatoes are nearly twice as firm as tomatoes in which these genes are NOT knocked [...]