A review stemming from a symposium at the last Botanical Society of America meeting before the pandemic, this article summarizes and updates information on the colonization of the land. One of the important points in the review comes from micropaleontological and molecular systematic (“time tree”) evidence indicating that there was a terrestrial flora dating back… Continue reading →
In collaboration with Jan de Vries, Sebastian Hess, and others, we have published a new classification of Zygnematophyceae. Genome-scale molecular phylogenetic analyses consistently show the zygnematophytes as the sister to embryophytes. This came as something of a surprise (at least to me) because of the structural simplicity of zygnematophytes when compared to their close relatives… Continue reading →
I am pleased to have received funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to explore genomic, metagenomic, and genetic evidence from Archaea regarding the origin of the eukaryotic sexual cycle. It is a three year grant starting in January. I am very excited to start this project!
I was elected an AAAS Fellow (a significant honor) in November 2020, but just got my certificate because of delays caused by the pandemic. Stay safe everybody! It looks like it might be showing itself out the door.
In collaboration with Mary Bisson and Shaun Phipps at the University at Buffalo, Graduate student Charles A. Goodman and I used RNAseq (i.e., quantitative Illumina sequencing) to examine the role of ion-channel transporters in the salt tolerance of Chara longifolia. It is nearly certain that the ancestral condition for Chara, and for all other Streptophyte… Continue reading →
Although most of my work is on photosynthetic protists, a long-term interest has been the role of horizontal gene transfer in evolution. That led a former student, Torstein Tengs, who now works for the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, to contact me for some help regarding evidence of gene transfer in the evolution of SARS-CoV-2,… Continue reading →
Our collaborative article on the evolution of multicellularity in green algae is out today in PNAS. This is interesting because multicellular organization seems to have evolved independently but nearly simultaneously in several lineages of green algae. Combining transcriptome sequencing with molecular phylogenetics and paleobotany we determined that these events took place during the late Tonian/Cryogenian,… Continue reading →
Graduate student Charlie Goodman and I have spent the last two weeks teaching a class titled “Algal Bioinformatics in the Context of Climate Change” at Shantou University in Shantou, China. Organized through the Shantou University – Universitá Politecnica delle Marche (Ancona, Italy) Joint Algal Research Center, the class was sponsored by the Shantou University College of… Continue reading →
Chara is a large and structurally complex green alga that is common in streams and ponds worldwide.Chara the other stoneworts (Charophyceae sensu stricto, or Charales sensu Mattox and Stewart) form an important component of the freshwater flora, and have superficial structural similarities to land plants. In 2001 our lab published a paper indicating that the… Continue reading →
Our recent publication in Bioessays, “Microbial Diversity in the Eukaryotic SAR Clade: Illuminating the Darkness Between Morphology and Molecular Data” was a collaborative effort between the Delwiche, Lane, and Katz labs. SAR taxa are members of the clade that includes Stramenopiles, Alveolates, and Rhizaria. These organisms comprise a major component of eukaryotic diversity, but because… Continue reading →
