News
Spring 2022, has been wonderful for our Convolvulaceae research. The signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (Juja, Kenya) and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (United Kingdom), fieldwork in Kenya, and a bouquet of wonderful Convolvulaceae papers were true highlights.
Recent morning glory papers
Three papers on the systematics and evolution of morning glories saw the light of day in May-July 2022, including this one by Ine De Man, one of our MSc students, and our visiting professor Ana Simões:
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De Man I, Simões ARG. 2022. Pollen diversity of Xenostegia D.F.Austin et Staples (Convolvulaceae). Grana 61: 132 - 139. https://doi.org/10.1080/00173134.2021.1990398
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Another paper published the first Convolvulaceae phylogeny that is based on the targeted sequencing of 353 nuclear genes, a publication that resulted from a wonderful international collaborative effort:
Simões et al. 2022. A birds's eye view of the systematics of Convolvulaceae: novel insights
from nuclear genomic data. Frontiers in Plant Science 13: 889988. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2022.889988
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Also, Ana Simões contributed to a paper on Convolvulaceae that produce pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs), which have a role in chemical defense against herbivores:
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Prakashrao et al. 2022. The long road of functional recruitment - the evolution of a gene duplicate to pyrrolizidine alkaloid biosynthesis in the morning glories (Convolvulaceae). Plant Direct 6: e420.
