Dr Sam Brockington
Dr Sam Brockington joined the group as a Marie Curie Post-Doctoral Fellow following a PhD at the Florida Museum of Natural History where he worked on the evolutionary development of petals in the flowering plant order Caryophyllales. His post-graduate work demonstrates that petals have arisen many times in separate lineages across the order, and that many of these novel petals exhibit unusual developmental genetic characteristics. His post-doctoral work aims to further elucidate the genetic mechanisms underpinning the evolution of petals in several lineages of the Caryophyllales. In particular understanding how novel developmental architectures have evolved to engender common petal traits such as MIXTA-dependent papillate cells. He is a Caryophyllales enthusiast and is also working on several additional aspects of Caryophyllid biology including pigment evolution, molecular phylogeny, and floral development in Malagasy endemics.
Contact:
- Email: Sam.Brockington@plantsci.cam.ac.uk
- Website: http://sambrockington.co.uk/
- Tel: 01223 (3)33934
Publications:
1. Brockington SF, Mavrodiev E, Ramdial J, Dhingra A, Soltis PS, Soltis, DE (2008). Keep the DNA Rolling: Multiple Displacement Amplification of Archival Plant DNA Extracts. Taxon 57 (3) 1-5
2. Wang H, Moore MJ, Soltis PS, Bell CD, Brockington SF, Roolse A, Latvis M, Davis CC, Manchester SR, and Soltis DE (2008) Rosid diversification and the rapid rise of angiosperm-dominated forests. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 (10) 3853-3858
3. Soltis PS, Brockington SF, Yoo MJ, Piedrahita A, Latvis M, Moore MJ, Chanderbali A, and Soltis DE (2008) Floral Variation and Floral Genetics in Basal Angiosperms. American Journal of Botany 96 (1) 110-128
4. Brockington SF, Alexandre R, Ramdial J, Moore M, Crawley S, Dhingra A, Hilu K, Soltis P, Soltis DE (2009) Phylogeny of the Caryophyllales sensu lato: Revisiting hypotheses on pollination biology and perianth differentiation in the core Caryophyllales. International Journal of Plant Science 170 (5): 627-643
5. Chanderbali AS, Yoo MJ, Zahn LM, Brockington SF, Gitzendanner MA, Albert VA, Leebens-Mack J, Altman NS, Ma H, DePamphilis CW, Soltis DE, and Soltis PS (2011) Conservation and canalization of gene expression during angiosperm diversification accompany the origin and evolution of the flower. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(52): 22570-5
6. Brockington SF, Walker RH, Glover BJ, Soltis PS, Soltis DE (2011) Complex Evolution of Pigmentation in the Caryophyllales. New Phytologist 190: 854-864)
7. Soltis DE, Smith SA, Cellinese N, Wurdack KJ, Tank D, Brockington SF, Refulio-Rodriguez NF, Walker JB, Moore MJ, Carlsward BS, Bell CD, Latvis M, Crawley S, Black C, Diouf D, Xi Z, Gitzendanner MA, Sytsma KJ, Qiu Y-L, Hilu KW, Manchester SR, Davis CC, Sanderson MJ, Olmstead RG, Judd WS, Donoghue MJ, and Soltis PS (2011) Angiosperm phylogeny: 17-genes, 640 taxa. American Journal of Botany 98: 704-730
8. Moore MJ, Hassan N, Gitzendanner MA, Bruenn RA, Croley M, Vandeventer A, Horn JW, Dhingra A, Brockington SF, Latvis M, Ramdial J, Alexandre R, Piedrahita A, Xi Z, Davis CC, Soltis PS, and Soltis DE (2011) Phylogenetic analysis of the plastid inverted repeat for 244 species: insights into deeper-level angiosperm relationships from a long, slowly evolving sequence region. International Journal of Plant Science 172: 541-558
9. Brockington SF, Rudall PJ, Frohlich MW, Oppenheimer DO, Soltis PS, Soltis DE (2011) "Living Stones" reveal alternative petal identity programs within the core eudicots (featured article) The Plant Journal 69: 193-203
10. Brockington SF*, Alverez R*, Alcorn K, Landis J, Thomas M, Walker RH, Hileman L, Glover BJ. (2012) Evolution and Phylogeny of the MIXTA's: Revealing potential targets for the study of cellular differentiation (advanced access online) Molecular Biology and Evolution
11. Glover BJ, Walker RH, Moyroud E, Brockington SF (2013) How to Spot a Flower. New Phytologist 197: 687-689
12. Stull GW, Moore MJ, Mandala VS, Douglas N, Kates HR, Qi X, Brockington SF, Soltis PS, Soltis DE, and Gitzendanner MA A targeted enrichment strategy for massively parallel sequencing of angiosperm plastid genomes. American Journal of Botany 1(2): 1200497
