Plant and animal development compared

Since I wrote about the wacky creationist who couldn't wrap his mind around the idea that plants and animals are related, and since I generally do a poor job of discussing that important kingdom of the plants (I admit it, I'm a metazoan bigot…but I do try to overcome my biases), I thought I'd briefly mention an older review by Elliot Meyerowitz that compares developmental processes in plants and animals. The main message is that developmental processes, the mechanisms that assemble the multicellular whole, are very different in the two groups and are non-homologous, but don't get confused: the basic cellular processes are homologous, and there's no doubt that we are related. The emphasis in this paper, though, is the evidence that plants and animals independently evolved multicellular developmental strategies. There is some convergence, but the tools in the toolbox are different.

Continue reading "Plant and animal development compared" (on Pharyngula)