A new CU Boulder-led study sheds light on the genetic mechanisms that allowed sunflowers to undergo a relatively rapid evolutionary transition from wild to domesticated in just over 5,000 years.
A new CU Boulder-led study sheds light on the genetic mechanisms that allowed sunflowers to undergo a relatively rapid evolutionary transition from wild to domesticated in just over 5,000 years.
Sunflowers, prized for their seeds and oil, have long held agricultural value for humans. Wild, ancestral varieties of the common sunflower Helianthus annuusare widely distributed across North America and grow smaller seeds than their domesticated counterparts, which have been selected over time for prominent single flower heads and larger seeds with high quality oil.
The new study focused on untangling the biological phenomenon of alternative splicing, a regulatory mechanism that allows multicellular organisms to code multiple RNA transcripts and proteins from a single gene. Alternative splicing creates useful efficiencies, but also introduces variation over time. The origins and contributions of alternative splicing to major evolutionary transitions—especially over short periods of time—remain largely unknown.
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