NSF PR 96-17 - April 30, 1996
Media contact: |
Cheryl Dybas |
(703) 306-1070 |
Program contact: |
Machi Dilworth |
(703) 306-1423 |
This material is available primarily for archival purposes. Telephone
numbers or other contact information may be out of date; please see current
contact information at media
contacts.
Research Group Cultivating Family Tree of Plant Life
Green plants -- and the biologists who study their
evolution -- are getting organized.
The push is coming from a group of plant biologists,
sponsored by a tri-agency (NSF/DOE/USDA) joint program,
who want to help clean up the welter of different
systems that scientists use for classifying and naming
plants. In the process they hope to make the entire
study of plants a bit more efficient.
Green plants represent some of the amazing diversities
that evolution has produced, says Machi Dilworth,
director of NSF's integrated plant biology program.
Life on earth as we know it could not exist without
green plants.
The Green Plant Phylogeny Research Coordination Group
(GPPRCG) is helping scientists determine the correct
arrangement of hundreds of species of green plants
according to evolutionary history -- for example,
connecting green algae with early land plants such
as mosses, liverworts and hornworts.
In the process of discovering the plants' proper places,
GPPRCG expects to link the laboratories and research
efforts of scientists across the United States and
abroad. In addition, GPPRCG is coordinating data-gathering
activities, facilitating the use of data bases for
morphologic and molecular information, exploring new
approaches to green plant phylogeny analysis, and
finding new mechanisms to disseminate data to researchers,
teachers and students.
Benefits of the project include:
- insights into the mysteries that still surround
development of life on earth;
- enhancements to pharmaceutical research, which
often relies on finding close relatives to flora
with known medicinal value;
- improved clarity in the presentation of green
plant taxonomy in textbooks;
- more efficient ways for plant biologists to select
research topics.
In the GPPRCG meetings held to date, plant biologists
discussed how research topics should be chosen. So
far, the consensus is clear: not the way they're chosen
now.
Very often, the selection of the plants to be studied
is guided by the interests of the researcher and the
local availability of samples. Thus, the best exemplar
taxa are not always included in the study,
says Dilworth.
The need to get organized and set priorities is made
more pressing, Dilworth notes, by recent advances
in gene sequencing and the resulting avalanche of
new information.
|