Cracking Nitrogen Fixation – New expeditions and update!

The NitFix team is ready to make it to the finish line with herbarium transcriptions! Sequencing efforts are nearly complete and exciting results are on the horizon. Already our work is providing glimpses into how plants form root nodules—uncovering key differences and similarities across millions of years of evolution of this important symbiosis between plants and microbes. More than ever, establishing links specimens between genetic data and specimen collection information is critical as we move into new work assessing the evolutionary and climatic context of today’s nitrogen-fixing species — work in which your transcription efforts will have a direct impact! We really appreciate your help getting us to completion.

-Ryan Folk and Rob Guralnick

[Above Figure – Cercis glabra, an Asian species and one of the few legumes with no root nodules that lacks the nitrogen-fixing symbiosis. Understanding groups like these is a major goal of the NitFix project as we seek to understand the earliest origins of nodules and shed light on engineering them into today’s crops]