Turtles, Dinosaurs, and The New Group Archelosauria

For decades the placement of turtles in its phylogenetic tree with respect to lizards, snakes, dinosaurs, and birds has been debated. Prior methods mostly involved digging up ancient fossil turtles and looking at physical features, a fairly unaccurate and speculatory method. However, with new genomic sequencing methods, a phylogenetic tree of turtles has been put together debunking old truths, and even creating a new group in its own.

Researchers with the California Academy of Sciences along with other scientists finally tackled the turtle phylogenetic tree problem with a new sequencing method known as UCE, which stands for Ultra Conserved Elements. Using this new method, researchers were able to obtain large quantities of comprehensive genomic data and compare this to genomic data of other species. The results were astounding. Researchers debunked the notion that turtles and tortoises were more closely related to lizards and snakes than anything. Instead, researchers found that their closes relatives actually fall within birds, crocodiles, and dinosaurs. This calls for a creation of a new group, which they dubbed  Archelosauria.
Prior theorized phylogeny of turtles did not match the fossil record or archeological timelines. Now, however, with the use of the Ultra Conserved Elements techniques, the phylogeny of turtles placed within the group Archelosauria not only matches evidence found in the fossil record, but also archeological timelines. This changes the face of research for Evolutionary Biologists studying reptiles. This cutting edge technology was able to clarify a decades old problem and is a testament to how genomic sequencing techniques are improving at an exponential rate. This provides great optimism for future work in the evolution of ancient creatures.

Article Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141124103225.htm
Additional Source: http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/turtles-more-closely-related-to-birds-than-to-lizards-according-to

Peach genetics can help better understand the crops used for Biofuel

An article in Science Daily helps us understand crops that are good candidates for biofuel are ones that grow fast, like willows are poplars.  Biofuel is fuel resulting for biological carbon fixation, and can be produced by a plants biomass.  To produce biofuel it would be helpful if these crops could be domesticated but to domesticate these crops, one needs to understand the physiology and genetics of the trees.  A peach and poplar tress are both apart of the rosid superfamily, along with some other fruit crops like apples, almonds, roses, and other plants.  The International Peach Genome Initiative published 265 million base genome from the Lovell peach variety.  Peach gene sequencing can help make sustainable improvements for the fruit as well as other tree species in the same superfamily by using comparative genomics.  Peach sequences will also help to understand tree biology.  Size matters when it comes to the peach genome, because it makes it ideal for it to be a model plant.  Researchers found poplar genomes can be related to the peaches, they also improved the biomass of the plant for it to produce more biofuel.  Researchers are focusing on the “evergreen” locus that extends the growing season of the crop, which could potentially control this locus in the poplar tree to increase biomass.

Addition Article: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/346558