Plants and animals overwhelmingly reproduce sexually, but why gamble with the DNA like that?
Tag - polyploidy
Sarah Covshoff
The Secret Genetic Code of Invasive Plants
Scientists uncover how the amount of DNA and number of chromosome sets make certain plants genetic supervillains when they invade new regions.
Alun Salt
A.I. Assistant
Pulling apart the many chromosomes of Rhododendron to improve conservation
Hu and team reveal a rich diversity of chromosome counts in the Rhododendron genus, potentially reshaping understanding of species diversification and offering crucial insights for biodiversity conservation.
Fi Gennu
Botanists discover not all clones are the same, it depends on how you make them
A study of Paspalum species native to South America shows that while clones can expand a plant's range, the method a parent uses to clone itself will impact how the population develops.
Species delimitation and a new Betula species in section Costatae
Botanists have developed an integrated approach to identify differences between closely related species.
Alex Assiry
Increasing the copies of genes increases the ecological niche that nettles can thrive in
Botanists find it's easier to find the gene to cope with a problem if you carry more copies of genes.
Phenotypic plasticity to nutrient availability in a wetland invasive species
Are triploid Butomus umbellatus plants more plastic to nutrient availability than diploid plants and does this make them more invasive?
William Salter
Plants can become less uniform by duplicating their genome
Though the experiment was limited to two genotypes of a single species, these findings support the idea that whole genome duplication can indeed increase plasticity.
A hybridisation headache hinders control of invasive Prosopis species
Can large scale biogeographic studies provide insights into Prosopis genetic diversity, hybridisation and clarify taxonomic uncertainties?
A sweet story: modern sugarcanes originate from three ancestral genomes
New study identifies hybridisation and backcrossing events to have led to the modern sugarcane cultivars.
Juniper Kiss
Polyploid plants take a leaf out from the invasive species book
The extent to which propagule pressure limits the establishment of local polyploid populations remains to be determined, because we know so little.
Where did greater yams come from? A global effort to track the ‘yummy’ dispersal history of a polyploid plant
Over 600 species of yams belong to the genus Dioscorea but about 10 species are cultivated. Yams are a very important tropical crop, mainly grown in Africa, Asia, the Pacific and South America. On 8.7 million hectares...
Bulking up: do plants make gains in secondary metabolites through genome duplication?
Whole genome duplication is often associated with gains in plant developmental complexity. Does this include secondary metabolites?
Liam Elliott
Do sword lilies use enough protection? Yes, post-pollination reproductive barriers work!
The study reveals the key role of gametic selection in siring success.
