Millions of years ago, some plants in the mustard family made the switch from simple leaves to complex leaves through two tiny tweaks to a single gene. One tweak to a small enhancer sequence gave the gene a new domain of ...
Biotechnology
Nov 17, 2016
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35
Plant biologists at ITbM, Nagoya University have discovered the key element, an EPFL2 peptide that is responsible for creating the teeth-like shapes on plant leaves. The zigzag edges of leaves, so-called leaf teeth, are important ...
Biotechnology
Sep 2, 2016
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1
The preference of Heliconius butterflies for certain leaf shapes is innate, but can be reversed through learning. These results support a decades-old theory for explaining the evolution of the exceptional diversity of leaf ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 28, 2016
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358
Batesian mimicry is a common evolutionary tool where unprotected species imitate harmful or poisonous species to protect themselves from predators. To date, nearly all examples of Batesian mimicry have come from studies on ...
Ecology
Jun 13, 2016
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5
A computer program that learns and can categorize leaves into large evolutionary categories such as plant families will lead to greatly improved fossil identification and a better understanding of flowering plant evolution, ...
Computer Sciences
Mar 7, 2016
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18
Many of us probably remember the punnett squares by which we were introduced to the idea of genetic inheritance in school: a dominant allele in each of my brown-eyed parents hides a recessive allele that explains my blue ...
Biotechnology
Nov 24, 2015
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3
Organisms differ in their morphology between species, within species and even within individuals at different stages of development. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany, ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 18, 2015
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23
Plant biologist Julin Maloof met fellow researcher Neelima Sinha while beginning his career at the University of California, Davis. Both interested in plant morphology and natural variation, the two first collaborated on ...
Biotechnology
Feb 3, 2015
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23
Spinach looks nothing like parsley, and basil bears no resemblance to thyme. Each plant has a typical leaf shape that can differ even within the same family. The information about what shape leaves will be is stored in the ...
Biotechnology
Feb 14, 2014
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