A genetic-analysis tool developed by UF Assistant Professor of Biology Liming Cai, Ph.D., has led to the first known interaction between Amborella, a rare New Caledonian plant, and a parasitic plant called Hachettea.
Cai and Rachel Cohen, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher in the biology department, made the discovery while developing a new method to identify horizontal gene transfer (HGT), the passing of genes between non-related species, in plants. The tool, HGTScanner, found alien DNA in existing samples of Amborella, which represents the oldest surviving branch of flowering plants and is a rare shrub native to New Caledonia.
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