Image: Creative Research Medals are awarded for outstanding research or creative activity within the past five years that focuses on a single theme identified with the University of Georgia. James Leebens-Mack, professor of plant biology, is a leading figure in plant evolutionary genomics. He co-led a team of scientists to sequence the genome of Amborella trichopoda, a small, shrub-like tree found only on the main island of New Caledonia in the South Pacific. Amborella is the sole survivor of an ancient evolutionary lineage that traces back to the last common ancestor of all flowering plants. By comparing the Amborella genome to those of other plants, Leebens-Mack and his colleagues reconstructed the portfolio of genes present in ancestral flowering plants. Way to go, Jim!! Check out the rest of the article here: http://research.uga.edu/research-awards/2016/03/22/james-leebens-mack/
