Voyager Lecture Series: The natural function of nicotine and other botanical tales of intrigue from Kayenta’s neighborhood

Thanks to the long-term patient funding of the Max Planck Society in Germany, Ian T. Baldwin and his students have developed a fire-chasing native tobacco plant, Nicotiana attenuata, which grows in Kayenta’s botanical neighborhood into a model for the rigorous scientific study of the “why questions” surrounding plants and drugs. These science-grounded examples of the creativity of natural selection underscore why nature preserves, such as those at the Lytle and DI Ranches, are invaluable laboratories for the study of gene function.