Found this in ScienceDaily this morning:
A team of John Innes centre scientists lead by Professor Nick Harberd have discovered how plants evolved the ability to adapt to changes in climate and environment. Plants adapt their growth, including key steps in their life cycle such as germination and flowering, to take advantage of environmental conditions. They can also repress growth when their environment is not favourable. This involves many complex signalling pathways which are integrated by the plant growth hormone gibberellin.
Publishing in the journal Current Biology, the researchers looked at how plants evolved this ability by looking at the genes involved in the gibberellin signalling pathway in a wide range of plants. They discovered that it was not until the flowering plants evolved 300 million years ago that plants gained the ability to repress growth in response to environmental cues.
Neat study. One of my secret interests is the evolution of angiosperms, which is a baffling little problem for scientists to solve.
Too bad I'm instantly pulled out of reader mode with this article and passively don the editor cap:
Not until the evolution of the gymnosperms (flowering plants) 300 million years ago are these interacting proteins able to repress growth. This group of plants became the most dominant, and make up the majority of plant species we see today.
Well, it's clear that the researchers had little to do with the press release. Angiosperms are colloquially termed flowering plants. Gymnosperms are a group of vascular plants that includes the conifers, cycads and Ginkgo biloba.
Maybe I'll blog about the muddy waters that are angiosperm evolution sometime in the near future.
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