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NOT A CARBON COPY. “Memories can be easily distorted, and a lack of relevant animal models has largely hindered our understanding of false-memory formation. We routinely use memories as guides for cognition and behaviour. Memory, however, can often be unreliable because it is not a carbon copy but rather a reconstruction of the past.” https://lnkd.in/du9NMki View in LinkedIn

NEW DATA, NEW FRAMEWORK. "Developmental genetic mechanisms underpinning aspects of stomatal and leaf formation provide additional new insight allowing progress towards a unified framework for understanding leaf evolution." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/96/3/345.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

MEDIA FRENZY. "Creating a False Memory in the Hippocampus. We created a false memory in mice by optogenetically manipulating memory engram–bearing cells in the hippocampus. Our data demonstrate that it is possible to generate an internally represented and behaviorally expressed fear memory via artificial means." (Ramirez et al.). https://lnkd.in/dJBPzNv View in LinkedIn

CONSERVED MERISTEM GENES. "Leaves in vascular plants are produced by determinate growth on the flanks of indeterminate shoot apical meristems. Inderminate growth of the shoot apical meristem is controlled by the knotted-like homeobox gene family (KNOX). KNOX genes are present in some green algae (e.g. Acetabularia), mosses, ferns, gymnosperms and angiosperms and their function may be highly conserved." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/96/3/345.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

PLANTS ACCELERATED ANIMAL EVOLUTION. "The recognition that plant evolution responds to and influences CO2 over millions of years reveals the existence of an intricate web of vegetation feedbacks regulating the long-term carbon cycle. Several of these feedbacks destabilized CO2 and climate during the late Palaeozoic but appear to have quickened the pace of terrestrial plant and animal evolution at that time." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/96/3/345.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

SINKING CARBON. "Surprisingly, plants effectively policed their own evolution since the decrease in CO2 was brought about as terrestrial floras evolved accelerating the rate of silicate rock weathering and enhancing sedimentary organic carbon burial, both of which are long-term sinks for CO2." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/96/3/345.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

EXISTING MACHINERY. "Molecular genetics indicates that the developmental mechanisms required for leaf production in vascular plants were recruited long before the advent of large megaphylls. According to theory, this morphogenetic potential was only realized as the concentration of atmospheric CO2 declined during the late Palaeozoic." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/96/3/345.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

SECONDARY EFFECTS. "Deeper roots accessed water and nutrients from a greater volume of soil, whilst xylem conduit enlargement and the appearance of secondary growth of xylem by the end of the Devonian increased the hydraulic conductance through stems and trunks to the leafy canopy, helping to maintain higher transpiration rates." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/96/3/345.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

PRIMARY KNOCK-ON EFFECTS. "But in the late Palaeozoic, the evolution of large leaves required the co-evolution of the root and vascular systems for improved water delivery and transport to sustain higher transpiration rates." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/96/3/345.full.pdf View in LinkedIn

PROBLEM SOLVED. "Large leaves of late Devonian/ early Carboniferous plants attained transpiration rates sufficiently high to maintain temperatures well below the lethal threshold, despite intercepting more solar energy." http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/96/3/345.full.pdf View in LinkedIn