GELIFES Seminars - Verónica Di Stilio

Verónica Di Stilio (University of Washington, Seattle)

Reconstructing the ancestral role of flowering pathway genes

The Di Stilio lab broadly investigates the genetic basis of key transitions during land plant evolution. The flower, and the interactions with pollinators that it enhances, are amongst the key innovations that have allowed angiosperms to become the most species-rich lineage of land plants. Current research takes an evolution-of-development approach to investigate the genetic basis of flower diversification. Our focus is on modulators of floral development (ABC model genes and the flower meristem identity gene LEAFY) as candidate genes for angiosperm diversification, and on their functional fate after gene duplication. Early on, we capitalized on the diversity of breeding and pollination systems in the genus Thalictrum, an early-diverging eudicot with a strategic phylogenetic position between model systems. In an attempt to reconstruct ancestral function, we have recently begun to explore the role of flowering-related gene orthologs in non-flowering plant lineages, in particular LEAFY orthologs in the fern Ceratopteris richardii.