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BLACK BOX. "Efforts to understand the molecular basis of sex determination in dioecious plant species have, to date, not been successful." https://lnkd.in/gb3zS32 View in LinkedIn

DIFFICULT IDENTITY. "In dioecious plants cultivated for fruit or seed it is often difficult to identify females at an early stage of growth." https://lnkd.in/gb3zS32 View in LinkedIn

ASPARAGUS SEX GENE CONCLUSION. “The work done to date suggests that single-gene sex determination systems may evolve following fixation of null mutations in unlinked but interacting sex-specification genes, or as we show here for garden asparagus, two or more linked genes may act independently during development of female or male reproductive pathways.” https://lnkd.in/gKA5C8N View in LinkedIn

SEXUAL SYSTEM DIVERSITY. “Given the immense diversity in sexual systems across the angiosperms and numerous independent origins of dioecy, we expect different genetic factors will be regulating male and female function in unrelated dioecious lineages.” https://lnkd.in/gKA5C8N View in LinkedIn

EXAPTATION OF OLD GENES. “Taken together, the body of data presented here strongly supports that the evolution of an active Y chromosome in Asparagus was mediated by gene duplication and neofuntionalization of a female suppressor and subsequent expansion of the non-recombining sex determination region.” https://lnkd.in/gKA5C8N View in LinkedIn

MTF CONVERSION. “Dioecy has evolved recently within Asparagus and sex chromosomes are cytogenetically identical with the Y, harboring a megabase segment that is missing from the X. We show that deletion of this entire region results in a male-to-female conversion, whereas loss of a single suppressor of female development drives male-to-hermaphrodite conversion.” https://lnkd.in/gKA5C8N View in LinkedIn

GENE SOUP. “The estimated 10(28) viral infections in the ocean per day substantially affect marine systems by causing host mortality, facilitating horizontal gene transfer and influencing biogeochemical cycles via production of dissolved organic matter through cell lysis. An emerging paradigm is that viruses also possess auxiliary metabolic genes (AMGs) —‘host' genes that may be expressed to augment viral-infected host metabolism and facilitate production of new viruses.” https://lnkd.in/eTUuJwS View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues from last weekend on the theme of viral dark matter. We have virtually no grasp on the diversity or roles of viruses. When you consider that viruses are typically hybrid swarms of semispecies, reverting to Victorian classification systems might appear quaint at best. These little creatures continue to make fools of us humans. https://lnkd.in/gc5arxt View in LinkedIn

'Political watershed' as 19 countries pledge to phase out coal https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/16/political-watershed-as-19-countries-pledge-to-phase-out-coal?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other View in LinkedIn

SEXUAL DIMORPHISM. “The phenomenon of sexual dimorphism is a direct product of evolution by natural selection, in that the struggle for reproductive success drives many male and female organisms down different evolutionary paths...at a biological level, the reproductive success of an organism is often more important than its long-term survival.” https://lnkd.in/gnW5-pQ View in LinkedIn