Evolutionary and Environmental Forces Sculpting Leaf Development

Latent developmental and evolutionary shapes embedded within the grapevine leaf

Across plants, leaves exhibit profound diversity in shape. As a single leaf expands, its shape is in constant flux. Plants may also produce leaves with different shapes at successive nodes. In addition, leaf shape varies among individuals, populations and species as a result of evolutionary processes and environmental influences. Because leaf shape can vary in many different ways, theoretically...

A Note on Evolutionary Rate Estimation in Bayesian Evolutionary Analysis: Focus on Pathogens

Bayesian evolutionary analysis provide a statistically sound and flexible framework for estimation of evolutionary parameters. In this method, posterior estimates of evolutionary rate (μ) are derived by combining evolutionary information in the data with researcher’s prior knowledge about the true value of μ. Nucleotide sequence samples of fast evolving pathogens that are taken at d...

Lindquist Protein Folding Sculpting Evolutionary Change

Evolutionary dynamics of the leaf phenological cycle in an oak metapopulation along an elevation gradient.

It has been predicted that environmental changes will radically alter the selective pressures on phenological traits. Long-lived species, such as trees, will be particularly affected, as they may need to undergo major adaptive change over only one or a few generations. The traits describing the annual life cycle of trees are generally highly evolvable, but nothing is known about the strength of...

Virtual Clay: A Real-time, Haptics-based Sculpting System

In this research we systematically develop a novel, interactive sculpting framework founded upon subdivision solids [1] and physics-based modeling. In contrast with popular subdivision surfaces, subdivision solids have the unique advantage of offering both the boundary representation and the interior material of a solid object. We unify the geometry of subdivision solids with the principle of p...