No Common Ancestor: How Caffeine Evolved In Coffee

The coffee plant has a newly sequenced genome and that can tell scientists what they really want to know about: the evolution of caffeine. The sequences and positions of genes in the coffee plant show that they evolved independently from genes with similar functions in tea and chocolate, which also make caffeine. Coffee did not inherit caffeine-linked genes from a common ancestor, but instead developed the genes on its own. Why Coffee? read more

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