Bowman Honours Projects

Evolution and development of land plants

Other supervisors:  Dr Eduardo Flores-Sandoval,  Dr John Alvarez, Dr Tom Dierschke, Olive Cheong, Tom Fisher

Background: We are studying the evolution and development of land plants, one of the several independent evolutions of multicellular organisms, and one that dramatically shaped the terrestrial environment. Land plants evolved from an ancestral freshwater alga. We utilize two model systems, both amenable to genetic and genomics approaches: Arabidopsis, a diminutive flowering plant that is a model; and Marchantia, a complex thalloid liverwort representing a basal lineage of land plants.

Project Aims:  We are particularly interested in the genetic control of pattern formation, focusing on the roles of families of transcription factors and hormone mediated signalling pathways that provide insight into how major changes in body plan evolved in the land plants. In addition, genetic pathways facilitating adaptation during the transition to a terrestrial environment from an ancestral aquatic environment.

Techniques:  Our approach is genetic, with loss- and gain-of-function alleles created via CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing and transgenic molecular biological approaches. Gene expression patterns are monitored by in vivo expressed fluorescent proteins and as well as genomic approaches. These skills are broadly applicable to any biological system.

*****