Two new articles from the lab have come out this week!

First, led by postdoc Allie Gaudinier, we have published a Tansley Review commissioned by the journal New Phytologist. The article explores in depth what studying the genetics of natural variation in flowering has taught us about evolutionary processes. The article looks in detail in particular at the processes of domestication, adaptation, speciation, and the evolution of developmental networks. The lit review undertaken for this was quite intensive, and we hope that plant biologists and evolutionary biologists alike come away with new knowledge and ideas.

Second, led by graduate student Peter Stokes, we have published a Dispatch highlighting the advances gained from an article in the same issue reporting the genome sequence of an important parasitic plant, Striga asiatica. We discuss how that article reveals new insights into how this pathogen and its relative that cause severe crop losses in Africa and Asia evolved its parasitic habit and the consequences of this specialized life history for the evolution of its genome content through gene loss and horizontal gene transfer.

Check them out!

Gaudinier A and Blackman BK. Evolutionary processes from the perspective of flowering time diversity. New Phytologist (in press) https://dx.doi.org10.1111/NPH.16205

tokes PJN^ and Blackman BK. Plant Genomics: Evolution and Development of a Major Crop Parasite. Current Biology 29: R868-R871 (2019).