bot lec 1

• Plant


  • Presence of leaves
  • Source of food
• Botany


  • The scientific study of plants
  • Plants influence everything that we do
  • If we understand them, the better we appreciate their importance
  • Generate all oxygen and sugars of life
  • Food and drink
  • Plant extracts have many uses-paints, soaps, adhesive, waxes, spices, drugs, dyes, oils, rubber, perfume, etc.
  • Clothing
  • Shelter
  • Paper
• Plant morphology and anatomy


  How are plants constructed
• Plant physiology, biochemistry


  How do plants work?
• Ecology, evolutionary biology, genetics, molecular biology


  How did plants get there?
• Ethnobiology


  Why are plants important?
• Arabidopsis thaliana


  • Native to Europe, Asia, and northwestern Africa
  • Annual plant, usually growing to 20–25 cm tall
  • n=5 (genomes) and the DNA sequencing of this species was completed in 2001
  • Life cycle is completed in six weeks
• LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor)

  • A microbe that lived 4 billion years ago
  • Lived deep underground in iron-sulfur rich hydrothermal vents
  • Anaerobic and autotrophic, it didn't breathe air and made its own food from the dark, metal-rich environment around it
  • Its metabolism depended upon hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen, turning them into organic compounds such as ammonia
• Domains


  • Bacteria
  • Archaea
  • Eukaryotes
• Shoot system


  • Elevates the plant above the soil
  • Functions for photosynthesis, reproduction and dispersal, conducts water and nutrients
• Root system


  • Usually underground
  • Anchors the plant in the soil
  • Absorbs/conducts water and nutrients
  • Stores nutrients
• Carolus Linnaeus


  • Swedish botanist, medical doctor; father of taxonomy
  • Published Systema Naturae in 1735, a scheme for classifying all known and yet to be discovered organisms according to the greater or lesser extent of their similarities

  
• Binomial naming


  Genus + specific epithet