The NSF grant allows scientists from seven laboratories--at Virginia Tech, the University of Florida and Florida Museum of Natural History, Yale University, the University of Michigan, the University of California at Davis, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and the University of Washington--to combine expertise to solve existing classification problems and develop formal regrouping and reclassification of these plants. The areas of expertise include genes and genomes, morphology and anatomy, fossil records, and computer modeling of such things as the time of origin.
Molecular biology and gene sequencing have changed the concept of plant evolution. "We thought for awhile we understood the classification, relationships, and date of origin and divergence of these plants," said Khidir Hilu, professor of biology at Virginia Tech. Formerly, flowering plants, which are the most dominant plant on the surface of the Earth and economically the most important, were classified by flower and leaf as monocots, such as orchids, and dicots, such as tomatoes, oranges, and cotton, Hilu said. Now, based on information from the genes, flowering plants are classified into a basal group that includes both monocots and some dicots such as magnolias and the true dicots, called eudicots. The new system has broken up several traditional groups and shuffled and mixed others, Hilu said.
The problem is that scientists still don't know where some groups fit and have no formal classification of others. In the past, most people suggested magnolias or buttercups were some of the earliest evolving flowering plants, or the base of the flowering plants tree. Now, Hilu said, a small shrub from New Caledonia cal
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Contact: Sally Harris
slharris@vt.edu
540-231-6759
Virginia Tech
15-Oct-2004