C. Plott

Seagrass genomes reveal a hexaploid ancestry facilitating adaptation to the marine environment

This study presents chromosome-level genome assemblies of seagrass species and identifies ancient and recent genome duplication events linked to adaptation to marine environments.

JGI Plant Gene Atlas: An updateable transcriptome resource to improve structural annotations and functional gene descriptions across the plant kingdom

The paper introduces the JGI Plant Gene Atlas, a resource that improves gene function annotations by analyzing transcript abundance across 18 species and 604 tissues, identifying 64,620 genes with unknown functions.

The western redcedar genome reveals low genetic diversity in a self-compatible conifer

The paper assembles the western redcedar genome and finds it has low genetic diversity, suggesting mechanisms like associative overdominance maintain genetic variation despite selfing.

The genome of stress tolerant crop wild relativePaspalum vaginatum leads to increased biomassproductivity in the crop Zea mays

This study sequenced Paspalum vaginatum, a stress-tolerant wild relative of maize, and found that inducing trehalose accumulation in maize increases biomass through autophagy.

Within-Arctic horizontal gene transfer as a driver of convergent evolution in distantly related microalgae

The paper identifies horizontal gene transfer as a driver of convergent evolution in Arctic microalgae, highlighting ice-binding domain gene transfers between distantly related species.

The recent evolutionary rescue of a staple crop depended on over half a century of global germplasm exchange

The paper identifies a globally rare East African allele of RMES1 that conferred resistance to sugarcane aphids in Haitian sorghum, demonstrating the importance of global germplasm exchange for evolutionary rescue.