Schedule
of Events
Lectures
Botany
Location:
Academic Resources Center
- ARC
NHB, Main Building, Ground Floor, Room 60A
Host:
Emma
Harrower
Speaker:
Ken Wurdack
Dr.
Kenneth Wurdack is Assistant Curator of Botany.
He works on the systematics and evolution of the
large tropical plant family Euphorbiaceae (source
of natural rubber, cassava, ricin, and poinsettias),
as well as, the order Malpighiales which is best
known for willows, violets, flax, passion flowers,
cocaine, mangroves, and the bizarre parasite Rafflesia
which has the world’s largest flower. Ken
has a paper coming out soon in Science
that features this research!
Topic:
Rubber, Ricin,
Poinsettias . . . and Jumping Genes
In
the post-genomics, soon-to-be post-model organism
world of today’s biology research, systematics
is enjoying a renaissance. It is once again being
recognized as an important foundation for all
other aspects of biology and phylogenies routinely
appear in Science or Nature. The same molecular
biology techniques that have revolutionized biology
in general have put molecular phylogenetics as
an important tool for understanding the systematics
and evolution of any group of organisms. Ken provides
an overview of molecular phylogenetics and in
particular looks at how the understanding of relationships
in a poorly known group of flowering plants (Euphorbiaceae
and Malpighiales) can have broader significance.
Phylogenies can inform us on unusual aspects of
their biology including: origins of ricin and
rubber, co-evolution between plants and insects,
and horizontal gene transfer. The movement of
genes between unrelated plants by non-sexual means
(e.g., by a host-parasite connection) has only
recently moved from being considered a fantasy
to a new paradigm in biology.
Learn more:
Host-to
-Parasite Gene Transfer in Flowering Plants
