Flowering plant origins
Fossils and DNA offer different timelines for the earliest living flowering-plant lineages. Why do their estimated beginnings still disagree?
Plant biology
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Circadian temperature compensation
Most chemical reactions change speed with temperature. A plant’s daily clock can keep nearly the same rhythm. How do its components cooperate to do that?
Mast seeding
Some plants produce huge seed crops together, then little for years. How do weather cues and stored resources set that rhythm?
Non-photochemical quenching
Plants safely release excess absorbed light as heat. How does their light-harvesting machinery switch this protection on and off?
Polyploid establishment
A plant with extra chromosome sets may have few compatible mates. Which conditions let a new polyploid population persist?
Gravity sensing in plants
Roots and shoots can tell which way gravity points. How do settling structures inside cells become a directional growth signal?
Speciation with gene flow
New species can diverge while exchanging genes. How do reproductive barriers combine to sustain separation?
Arbuscule maintenance
Does nutrient delivery by a fungal branch inside a root influence how long the plant maintains it?
Mycorrhizal defence signalling
Aphid attack on one bean plant can change a neighbour’s defences in fungal-network experiments. What carries the cue between them?
Root hydrotropism
A root can curve toward a wetter patch of soil. What first tells its growing cells that one side has more available water than the other?
S-RNase specificity
A Petunia flower can stop its own pollen while accepting pollen with a different mating type. How does a small team of pollen proteins distinguish so many versions of the same toxic enzyme?