Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

Although DNA has built the framework for molecular insights from museum collections, the utility of archival RNA remains largely unexplored. Likely a consequence of the known instability of RNA relative to DNA, this has effectively precluded the use of herbaria for transcriptomics. Here, we challenge the assumption that herbaria cannot be used for transcriptomics by assembling transcriptomes from RNA extracted from herbarium specimens. Through systematic comparison of transcriptomes from fresh-collected, silica-dried, and archival specimens, we demonstrate the suitability of herbarium-derived RNA for transcriptomics. We show the practical applicability of archival mRNA by functionally validating a plant immune receptor synthesized from a specimen collected in 1956. These results contradict the community consensus regarding archival RNA and open the door to subsequent transcriptomic explorations of rare and extinct plant species. Our findings highlight the importance of preserving and utilizing the diversity embedded within herbarium collections.

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This is very much a work in progress. Currently: TreeHouse will only open files with .tre and .newick extensions, and will treat them as NEWICK (multi-tree files are supported). NEXUS support comi...

Recent studies have demonstrated that it is a misconception that transcriptome sequencing requires tissue preserved at ultracold temperatures. Here, we outline the potential origins of this misconcept...

Many specialized metabolic pathways have evolved convergently in plants, but distinguishing multiple origins from alternative evolutionary scenarios can be difficult. Here, we explore the evolution .....

Background and Aims: The flowering plant family Apocynaceae exhibits diverse adaptations with biological and pharmaceutical significance, many of which have been studied with RNA-seq. However, despite...

Background and Aims: The flowering plant family Apocynaceae exhibits diverse adaptations with biological and pharmaceutical significance, many of which have been studied with RNA-seq. However, despite...

Robinson et al. identify pathogenic Pseudomonas viridiflava in wild Marchantia polymorpha liverworts and interrogate the mechanisms enabling virulence in non-flowering and flowering plants. Their resu...

Thirteen University of Michigan faculty members earned election to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2024.

AbstractMotivation. Genotype datasets typically contain a large number of single nucleotide polymorphisms for a comparatively small number of individuals.

While DNA has built the framework for molecular insights from museum collections, the utility of archival RNA remains largely unexplored. Likely a consequence of the known instability of RNA relative ...

AbstractMotivation. Recent advancements in parallel sequencing methods have precipitated a surge in publicly available short-read sequence data. This has e

Grenz et al. interrogate the Pseudomonas syringae species complex for its capacity to infect evolutionarily divergent host plants. Their results demonstrate that broad host isolates from phylogroup 2 rely on the lipopeptide toxin syringomycin to promote host necrosis and enhance bacterial growth in plants.