No stories for this week. However, I leave you with Christmas Botany - fun plant facts related to the Christmas season. This very amusing site is part of Dr. Stephen Saupe’s Plants and Human Affairs class. Of particular note: evidence (?) that the inspiration for Santa Claus comes from a mushroom! […]

Algae Sex Determination - A recent breakthrough in understanding how sperm and egg cells arose comes from work in Algae. A paper published in Current Biology reports that a male specific gene expressed in sperm cells may have its origins in an isogamous ancestor, that is, a species that has no ‘male’ or ‘female’ […]