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Dioecy in Flowering Plants: From the First Observations of Prospero Alpini in the XVI Century to the Most Recent Advances in the Genomics Era

Authors :
Alessandro Vannozzi
Fabio Palumbo
Margherita Lucchin
Gianni Barcaccia
Source :
Agriculture, Vol 12, Iss 3, p 364 (2022)
Publication Year :
2022
Publisher :
MDPI AG, 2022.

Abstract

Prospero Alpini was an Italian physician, botanist and scientist. Born in Marostica, in the Republic of Venice, in his youth he served in the Milanese army, but in 1574 he decided to study medicine at the University of Padova, where he graduated in 1578. After a short period as a doctor in Camposampiero (Padova, Italy), he became the personal doctor of Giorgio Emo, the appointed consul in Cairo in Egypt. In this way, he was able to devote himself to the study of botany. In this country, from the cultivation practices of the date palm, he described for the first time the sexual dimorphism in plants, later adopted as the basis of Linnaeus’ scientific classification system. Since then, this behavior, termed dioecy, has been described in other plant species, and many advances have been made in understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying this phenomenon, especially with the advent of genomics. Starting from a brief description of Prospero’s life and his pioneering scientific contribution, we illustrated the two main models explaining dioecism. This was achieved by taking a cue from two plant species, grapevine and poplar, in which genomics and single molecule sequencing technologies played a pivotal role in scientific advance in this field.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
20770472
Volume :
12
Issue :
3
Database :
Directory of Open Access Journals
Journal :
Agriculture
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
edsdoj.5768ae58d74446fe91ed1dd03ddb6d6a
Document Type :
article
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture12030364