From cacti to carnivores

An NSF grant looking at the genomics of extreme adaptation has been co-awarded to Samuel Brockington at the Department of Plant Sciences Cambridge, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Michigan and Oberlin College, USA. Over the next three years they will be sequencing the genomes and transcriptomes of species belonging to the Caryophyllales. This order of flowering plants includes some of the most bizarre species on the planet, such as the cactus and carnivorous plants. The major goal is to understand relationships between shifts in the rate of molecular evolution, and extreme shifts in morphological and physiological evolution. The Isaac Newton Trust, Cambridge will support a post-doctoral research assistant in association with this project.