COST Action FA1406 (2015-2019)

Recent publication

By Stefan A Rensing

Why we need more non-seed plant models

New Phytol. 2017 Feb 13. doi: 10.1111/nph.14464.

Summary: Out of a hundred sequenced and published land plant genomes, four are not of flowering plants. This severely skewed taxonomic sampling hinders our comprehension of land plant evolution at large. Moreover, most genetically accessible model species are flowering plants as well. If we are to gain a deeper understanding of how plants evolved and still evolve, and which of their developmental patterns are ancestral or derived, we need to study a more diverse set of plants. Here, I thus argue that we need to sequence genomes of so far neglected lineages, and that we need to develop more non-seed plant model species.

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