The genome of microbiology's platypus is still incomplete, but scientists have now sequenced the genome of the plant's platypus. It is a small plant called Amborella, endemic to the main island, Grande Terre, of New Caledonia in the South Pacific, probably unknown to most of us before that.
"In the same way that the genome sequence of the platypus – a survivor of an ancient lineage – can help us study the evolution of all mammals, the genome sequence of Amborella can help us learn about the evolution of all flowers," said co-author Dr Victor Albert of the University at Buffalo.The genome will be very useful to decipher the changes of function upon gene duplication, as it provides conclusive evidence that the ancestor of all flowering plants, including Amborella, evolved following a ‘genome doubling event’ that occurred about 200 million years ago. It would be interesting to see what happened to those duplications. Plenty of other fascinating analysis are bound to come from this newly sequenced genome. The story is covered in the Sci-News.com post to Amborella. See also the Amborella database
