The coffee genome provides insight into the convergent evolution of caffeine biosynthesis

France Denoeud1, Lorenzo Carretero-Paulet2, Alexis Dereeper3

  • 1Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique, Genoscope, Institut de Génomique, BP5706, 91057 Evry, France. CNRS, UMR 8030, CP5706, Evry, France. Université d'Evry, UMR 8030, CP5706, Evry, France.

Science (New York, N.Y.)
|September 6, 2014
PubMed

Related Concept Videos

Convergent Evolution01:54

Convergent Evolution

Evolution shapes the features of organisms over time, ensuring that they are suited for the environments in which they live. Sometimes, selection pressure leads to the rise of similar but unrelated adaptations in organisms with no recent common ancestors, a process known as convergent evolution.
27.5K
C4 Pathway and CAM01:27

C4 Pathway and CAM

Most plants use the C3 pathway for carbon fixation. However, some plants, such as sugar cane, corn, and cacti that grow in hot conditions, use alternative pathways to fix carbon and conserve energy loss due to photorespiration. Photorespiration is the process that occurs when the oxygen concentration is high. Under such conditions, the rubisco enzyme in the Calvin cycle binds O2 instead of CO2, which halts photosynthesis and consumes energy.
C4 Pathway
The C4 pathway is used by plants such as...
37.9K
Genome Size and the Evolution of New Genes03:21

Genome Size and the Evolution of New Genes

2.5K
Genome Size and the Evolution of New Genes03:21

Genome Size and the Evolution of New Genes

While every living organism has a genome of some kind (be it RNA, or DNA), there is considerable variation in the sizes of these blueprints. One major factor that impacts genome size is whether the organism is prokaryotic or eukaryotic. In prokaryotes, the genome contains little to no non-coding sequence, such that genes are tightly clustered in groups or operons sequentially along the chromosome. Conversely, the genes in eukaryotes are punctuated by long stretches of non-coding sequence.
7.5K
Synteny and Evolution02:31

Synteny and Evolution

John H. Renwick first coined the term “synteny” in 1971, which refers to the genes present on the same chromosomes, even if they are not genetically linked. The species with common ancestry tend to show conserved syntenic regions. Therefore, the concept of synteny is nowadays used to describe the evolutionary relationship between species.
Around 80 million years ago, the human and mice lineages diverged from the common ancestor. During the course of evolution, the ancestral...
2.9K
Evolutionary Relationships through Genome Comparisons02:54

Evolutionary Relationships through Genome Comparisons

Genome comparison is one of the excellent ways to interpret the evolutionary relationships between organisms. The basic principle of genome comparison is that if two species share a common feature, it is likely encoded by the DNA sequence conserved between both species. The advent of genome sequencing technologies in the late 20th century enabled scientists to understand the concept of conservation of domains between species and helped them to deduce evolutionary relationships across diverse...
5.8K