Evolutionary Biology of Plants

Goals:
· Being able to describe the main characteristics of the green lineage, to explain the issues of the land conquest by plants and to compare reproductive strategies among major plants groups
· Searching for scientific bibliographic references related to a defined topic and finding the corresponding articles
· Searching, in a set of reviews and primary articles, for key/pertinent elements that inform on advances in a given scientific topic
· Putting a scientific question in the context of the state-of-the-art; Presenting (orally and in a written report) a synthetic view on a large amount of scientific data
· Understanding how scientific approaches and methodologies lead to knowledge elaboration
· Working in collaborative groups

Program:
- The green lineage: groups and phylogenetic classification
- Conquest of the land by plants: Emergence from the aquatic environment and evolution of body plans
- Endosymbiosis in the plant kingdom: Mechanism, coordination of three genomes and consequences on physiology, development and metabolism
- Photosynthesis evolution (antenna structure, photoprotection, state transitions)
- Secondary metabolisms in the plant kingdom
- Microalgaes evolution and extreme conditions
- Evolution of reproductive strategies: algae, mosses, ferns, spermaphytes
- The origin of the flower

Tutorials:
Preparing, presenting and discussing a bibliographic project
After an introductory tutorial that will provide tips to perform a bibliographic project, a tutorial slot at the University library will be devoted to the presentation of scientific literature resources and to bibliographic research tools. During the time of the bibliographic research, a short discussion will be organized between the 3 students and their reference teacher about the on-going bibliographic research and the structure of the written and oral reports.
Oral presentations of the bibliographic work will take place during discussions sessions with the complete group of students.


Prerequisites and examination procedures:
Prerequisites
· Knowing the bases of cell biology, gene regulation, and plant physiology
· Finding information in a scientific article written in English
· Knowing how to interpret and to bring a critical view on experimental results
Examination procedures
· Mid-term oral exam (1h 30%) + Bibliographic report (30%) + Written final exam (1:30h - 40%)

Teaching Methods
Tradition lectures (28.5 Hours) Tutorials and discussions (16.5 hours)

Language of instruction
English

WEB pages
https://master-biologie.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/majors/planta-international-plant-int-/