Year: 2022

NEW TRAITS. "New and young polyploids typically display novel transcriptomic and/or proteomic phenomena, including biased gene expression with respect to homoeolog (duplicate gene copies resulting from polyploidy), expression level dominance with respect to the two different progenitor diploid genomes, and expression subfunctionalization (partitioning of aggregate ancestral expression among homoeologs) or neofunctionalization (novel expression domain or protein function)." http://www.amjbot.org/content/early/2015/10/09/ajb.1500320 View in LinkedIn

CASCADE OF TRAITS. "Even more varied yet poorly understood is the gamut of short-term evolutionary responses to polyploidy at other “omics” levels, including a diverse suite of epigenomic and small RNA alterations with cascading effects that propagate through proteomic, physiological, and metabolomic networks to ultimately affect plant phenotype and function." http://www.amjbot.org/content/early/2015/10/09/ajb.1500320 View in LinkedIn

CONSEQUENCES. "Some of the longer-term consequences of repeated, cyclical polyploidy become evident when one considers that lineages having experienced multiple historical rounds of polyploidy do not exhibit especially high chromosome numbers nor genome sizes." http://www.amjbot.org/content/early/2015/10/09/ajb.1500320 View in LinkedIn

THEORY VS PRACTICE 1. "If one assumes that the ancestral angiosperm chromosome number is 5–7, as often suggested, then modern Gossypium hirsutum, for example, should have 5–7 times 144, or 720–1008 chromosomes in its haploid complement, in the absence of massive, repeated chromosome number reduction, instead of the 26 it actually contains." http://www.amjbot.org/content/early/2015/10/09/ajb.1500320 View in LinkedIn

THEORY VS PRACTICE 2. "Similarly, and notwithstanding the uncertainty regarding actual ancestral angiosperm genome sizes, if one postulates a small ancestral genome size of, say, 300 megabases, in the absence of countervailing forces the modern G. hirsutum genome should be enormous, 43.2 gigabases (Gb), instead of the 2.4 Gb that it actually contains." http://www.amjbot.org/content/early/2015/10/09/ajb.1500320 View in LinkedIn

REVERSIBLE POLYPLOIDY. "Thus, it is immediately apparent that polyploidy is, at least in part, reversible, and that over time it is followed by massive chromosomal rearrangements, reductions in chromosome number, and the large-scale loss of both repetitive sequences and duplicated genes all leading to genome downsizing." http://www.amjbot.org/content/early/2015/10/09/ajb.1500320 View in LinkedIn

ANCESTRAL FOOTPRINTS. "This diploidization phenomenon reflects mechanistically diverse processes, operating collectively and over the long haul, ultimately leading to contemporary descendants that behave cytogenetically as normal diploids while harboring in their genomes the vestigial evidence of past polyploidy events." http://www.amjbot.org/content/early/2015/10/09/ajb.1500320 View in LinkedIn

SELECTIVE PROCESS. "One intriguing and only partially understood dimension of the genomic diploidization process is that it may be nonrandom with respect to the types of genes retained in duplicate and those returned to single-copy status by mutation." http://www.amjbot.org/content/early/2015/10/09/ajb.1500320 View in LinkedIn

ENRICHED HOUSEKEEPING GENES. "In general, single-copy genes are enriched for essential housekeeping functions and include genes targeted to the chloroplast and those involved in DNA repair and replication; they also are more highly and broadly expressed than are those retained in duplicate." http://www.amjbot.org/content/early/2015/10/09/ajb.1500320 View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE focuses on the first demonstration of artificial parthenogenesis and the firestorm it created. Pathenogenesis is a type of natural asexual reproduction in which the offspring develops from unfertilized eggs, effectively an immaculate conception. This is a story of an eccentric scientist who was launched into the public limelight by his provocative work. View in LinkedIn