Much has been written of the early history of comparative embryology and its influence on the emergence of an evolutionary developmental perspective. However, this literature, which dates back nearly a century, has been focused on metazoans, without acknowledgment of the contributions of comparative plant morphologists to the creation of a developmental view of biodiversity. We trace the origin...

As regulators of gene expression in multicellular organisms, microRNAs (miRNAs) are crucial for growth and development. While a plethora of factors involved in their biogenesis and action in Arabidopsis thaliana have been described, these processes and their fine-tuning are not fully understood in plants. Here, we used plants expressing an artificial miRNA target mimic (MIM) to screen for negat...

Variations in floral architecture are evolutionarily and economically important, affecting features such as pollination, predation and seed dispersal. However, in spite of the central role of flowers in plant reproduction, agriculture and horticulture, the processes responsible for the origin and subsequent evolution of the flower remain fundamental problems in plant biology. Major questions in...

A salient feature of flowering plant diversification is the emergence of a novel suite of floral features coinciding with the origin of the most species-rich lineage, Pentapetalae. Advances in phylogenetics, developmental genetics and genomics, including new analyses presented here, are helping to reconstruct the specific evolutionary steps involved in the evolution of this clade. The enormous ...

In this paper the author describes the origin and development of pushpa Ayurveda or floral therapy, a special branch of Ayurvea. The strict adherence of nonviolent principles necessitated the Jain Medical Pundits to develop this branch and put it on a proper pedestal.