M Sc. level. The plant kingdom which connects with human's existence and development has undergone evolutionary processes for more than 3.5 billion years. Plants have had more than 400 million years of development since they first colonized the land. Although the emergence of humans occurred only several million years ago, their actions have broken the natural balance in many environments and these processes still continue. The aims of the Young Scientists' Laboratory are in recognizing the processes of evolution, finding the regulation mechanisms of plant evolution, establishing the relationships of plant evolution and environment changes, keeping the coordinated development between humans and nature, protecting biological diversity and providing theoretical basis for rational and sustainable utilization of biology resources.
Fossil plants collected through geological history are the focus of the research.
Collecting these specimens depends on geological knowledge and techniques while research relies on biological thought and methodology. At the same time, comparative research is carried out on modern plants which have a close relationship with the fossil plants. In our work, fossil plants are a key link in determining plant evolution with details of morphology, anatomy, reproductive biology and physiology helping to reconstruct the whole plant. With this accumulated knowledge on extinct plants we can recover the original evolutionary series of plant development, step by step. From this, our research goals realizing the essence of plant origin and evolution, establishing the natural systematic relationships within the plant kingdom can then be reached.