Long-lived perennial plants, with distinctive habits of inter-annual growth, defense, and physiology, are of great economic and ecological importance. However, some biological mechanisms resulting from genome duplication and functional divergence of genes in these systems remain poorly studied. Here, we discovered an association between a poplar (Populus trichocarpa) 5-enolpyruvylshikimate 3-phosphate synthase gene (PtrEPSP) and lignin… [Read More]

Polyglutamine (polyQ) stretches have been reported to occur in proteins across many organisms including animals, fungi and plants. Expansion of these repeats has attracted much attention due their associations with numerous human diseases including Huntington’s and other neurological maladies. This suggests that the relative length of polyQ stretches is an important modulator of their function…. [Read More]

Brachypodium distachyon (n=5) is a diploid and has been widely used as a genetic model. Brachypodium stacei (n=10) and B. hybridum (n=15) are species that are related to B. distachyon, leading to a theory that they are part of a polyploid series based on x = 5. Several lines of evidence suggest that this hypothesis… [Read More]

BACKGROUND: Advances in genomic technologies have expanded our ability to accurately and exhaustively detect natural genomic variants that can be applied in crop improvement and to increase our knowledge of plant evolution and adaptation. Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.), an allotetraploid (2n = 4x = 36) perennial C4 grass (Poaceae family) native to North America and… [Read More]