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SUMMARY:Kenneth Sporne Lecture: Uncovering the drivers of complexity in va
 scular plants\, new insights from fossils and genes  - Sandy Hetherington\
 , University of Edinburgh
DTSTART:20240222T121500Z
DTEND:20240222T134500Z
UID:TALK206167@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Jake Harris
DESCRIPTION:*Kenneth Sporne Lecture*\n\nVascular plants are the most diver
 se lineage of land plants alive today encompassing a plethora of botanical
  form spanning creeping lycophytes and ferns\, towering gymnosperms and fl
 amboyant flowering plants. For a lineage with such diversity today\, the g
 roup had a surprisingly humble origin over 430 million years ago. The firs
 t vascular plants were minute in size\, consisting of tiny branching twigs
  lacking leaves and roots. However\, just 50 million years after these ear
 liest vascular plants were taking hold on the terrestrial surface the grou
 p had already exploded in diversity leading to the formation of the first 
 forests. What enabled this remarkable explosion of vascular plant diversit
 y and the origin of key features such as roots\, leaves and wood remains a
  key question in plant evolutionary biology. The goal for my work is to sh
 ed light on this question and help establish what developmental innovation
 s underpinned this explosion in vascular plants. We do this by taking an i
 nterdisciplinary approach\, combing studies of fossil plants with the inve
 stigation of developmental and genetic networks in living species. In the 
 talk I will describe our ongoing work to uncover the origin of sugar trans
 port in plants and the independent origins of plant leaves.
LOCATION:Large Lecture Theatre\, Department of Plant Sciences
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