Abstract
Chemical ecologist Ian T. Baldwin has devoted his career to understanding the traits that allow plants to survive in the wild. The founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, and current head of its department of molecular ecology, Baldwin has developed a molecular toolbox for North America’s native coyote tobacco. He uses the tools to study gene function in the plant’s natural habitat in the Lytle Ranch Preserve in Utah, asserting that the best way to measure a gene’s effect on an organism’s fitness is in the environment in which it evolved. Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2013, Baldwin talks to PNAS about his latest findings. Ian T. Baldwin. Image credit: Celia Diezel. > PNAS:Your work focuses on coyote tobacco ( Nicotiana attenuate ) . What makes this plant particularly interesting? > Baldwin:Its natural habitat is the postfire environment, where there’s lots of nitrogen and phosphorus and no competitors, exactly like the slash and burn agricultural niche we use to …
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