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FITNESS LOAD. "Although mutations provide the ultimate material upon which natural selection depends, most mutations are deleterious, and in certain settings can lead to a substantial fitness load. We are attempting to understand the nearly 1000-fold range of variation in the mutation rate that exists across the Tree of Life, through the study of a diversity of invertebrates and unicellular eukaryotes and prokaryotes." (Michael Lynch). https://lnkd.in/e8G48jD View in LinkedIn

PLANT GENETIC HISTORIES. "Although polyploidy may have experienced a nadir of interest during the latter half of the 20th century, the sequencing and analyses of plant genomes have revealed numerous cycles of polyploidy in the history of nearly all land plants." https://lnkd.in/bCmw3Fr View in LinkedIn

NUMEROUS STARTS. "A unique aspect of polyploidy is that many polyploid species may trace their ancestry to numerous, independent origins." https://lnkd.in/bCmw3Fr View in LinkedIn

Yoshinori Ohsumi wins Nobel prize in medicine for work on autophagy http://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/03/yoshinori-ohsumi-wins-nobel-prize-in-medicine?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other View in LinkedIn

SPECIATION. "Polyploidy has long been proposed as a mechanism of “instant speciation”, but empirical analyses of this contention are relatively rare." https://lnkd.in/e5Q_ate View in LinkedIn

TRANSITION STATE. "Polyploidy has long been hypothesized to be associated with transitions in sexual systems in flowering plants, and alternatively hypothesized to be associated with both monoecy and dioecy." https://lnkd.in/e5Q_ate View in LinkedIn

EXAPTATION. "Recent analyses have demonstrated that neofunctionalization of paralogs from ancient polyploidy have driven a chemical arms race between plants of the Brassicales and their pierid butterfly herbivores." https://lnkd.in/e5Q_ate View in LinkedIn

GENE DUPLICATION. "He proposed the now familiar concept that these polyploid plants were fertile because genome doubling restored chromosome pairing in otherwise sterile hybrids. The restoration of fertility to sterile hybrids by doubling their genomes was a potent and elegant demonstration of how postzygotic reproductive isolation could be solved." https://lnkd.in/e5Q_ate View in LinkedIn

POLYPLOIDY RULES. "We found that while certain rules may govern gene retention and loss, systems vary in the prevalence of gene silencing vs. homeolog loss, chromosomal change, the presence of a dominant genome (in allopolyploids), and the relative importance of hybridization vs. genome doubling per se." https://lnkd.in/bCmw3Fr View in LinkedIn

"EXTRAFLORAL NECTARIES are nectar-secreting parts of the plant surface other than flowers. These organs are not directly involved in pollination, and can be found on virtually all aboveground plant parts. Plants bearing extrafloral nectaries are widely distributed around the world. About 114 plant families with more than 700 genera and 4000 species of plants, including pteridophytes, gymnosperms and angiosperms, are known to possess extrafloral nectaries to date." https://lnkd.in/ewhdr2N View in LinkedIn