Today's Botany Photo of the Day shows Helianthus anomalus, a hybrid species of sunflower that grows in the sand dunes of Utah. This species arose about 50,000 years ago as a hybrid of Helianthus annuus and Helianthus petiolaris. The Botany Photo of the Day website describes experiments that reproduced this hybridization event showing that hybrids can be more fit—in certain environments—than either parent. [see Jane Harris Zsovan Doesn't Understand Speciation]
Ah, Helianthus annuus. This reminds me of one of my favorite papers:
ReplyDeleteDomon C and Steinmetz A. (1994):
Exon shuffling in anther-specific genes from sunflower.
Mol Gen Genet 244(3):312-7
which describes how novelty in expression patterns can be generated by shuffling of promoters and 5' exons. Unfortunately, the paper hasn't received much interest.
I love the photo.
ReplyDeleteWhy am I missing the side bar of your blog, and the blog seems to be truncated. Is the problem my end or yours?
Possibly a server failing to serve some page element?
ReplyDeleteWhy am I missing the side bar of your blog, and the blog seems to be truncated. Is the problem my end or yours?
ReplyDeleteIt seems to be some sort of error with IE in the Linus Pauling post. I'm having the same problem. Works fine in Firefox, or if you open a specific post.
Timothy V Reeves asks,
ReplyDeleteWhy am I missing the side bar of your blog, and the blog seems to be truncated. Is the problem my end or yours?
I didn't see a problem because I normally use Firefox. When I checked the blog using Microsoft Explorer I see the same thing you do.
I don't know what the problem is. I'm working on it.
I think I've fixed the problem. Thanks Timothy for alerting me.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like Explorer is sensitive to the placing of the code for the peekaboo widget ("Read More").