© РИА Томск. Михаил Голубев
TOMSK, Feb 18 – RIA Tomsk. Scientists of Tomsk State University (TSU) and the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing) until 2022 will study the evolution of buttercups - a group of plants found in all climatic zones of the planet; the project was supported by scientific funds of both countries, the TSU press service reported on Tuesday.
It is specified that the staff of the TSU Herbarium laboratory won the competition for the best research projects conducted jointly by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Scientists will present the results of the project in the spring of 2022.
"The international research project will allow using DNA analysis to restore order in the taxonomy of this family (buttercups) and to trace the evolution of plants that are promising both as models for the study of phylogeny of angiosperms and in industrial floriculture and pharmacology", - is said in the report.
© РИА Томск. Павел Стефанский
The head of the research project on the part of TSU is Andrey Erst, senior researcher of the Herbarium laboratory; on the Chinese side - Wei Wang, professor of the State Key Laboratory of Systematics and Evolutionary Botany from the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
According to the university, the family of buttercups (Ranunculaceae) represents one of the earliest in terms of evolution diverging lines among angiosperms. It has 59 genera, approximately 2.5-3 thousand species. The study of such a large group - is a difficult task, because many representatives of this family live in limited territories, sometimes in remote areas.
“Taxonomic revision today, like dozens of years ago, is a gigantic and painstaking work. <...> The results obtained will allow us to establish a relationship between natural complexes of different continents and predict their state in the future”, - comments Ernst.