The origin of land plants is rooted in two bursts of genomic novelty (Curr. Biol)
Plant Science Research WeeklyThe transition of plants from water to land is one of the most momentous shifts in the history of life on Earth. 500 million years ago, the first land plants dramatically changed the environments on the planet, creating soils, rivers and the oxygen-rich atmosphere. However, the factors that enabled early…
Isolation of an archaeon at the prokaryote–eukaryote interface (Nature)
Plant Science Research WeeklySometime around 1.8 to 2 billion years ago, complex eukaryotic cells appeared for the first time, providing the ancestor for plants, animals and fungi. Many lines of evidence have indicated that this event probably involved an ancient archaeon taking up an ancient bacterium, the progenitor of all mitochondria.…
Review: The many roads to (and from) multicellularity (J. Exp. Bot)
Plant Science Research WeeklyMulticellularity is without doubt a fantastic fluke. We know that it arose independently in plants and animals, but how many times? And is there a common “predisposition” to multicellularity in the universal common ancestor? These are the questions addressed in this review by Niklas and Newman. Looking…
Primer: Rhynie chert ($) (Curr. Biol.)
Plant Science Research WeeklyThis short Primer by Strullu-Derrien et al. introduces the amazing early vascular plant fossils from the Rhynie chert. The fossils' high level of detail is a consequence of their being embedded in a glass-like silica matrix, possibly derived from hydrothermal springs. The fossils are approximately 407…
Evolution of carnivorous traps from planar leaves through simple shifts in gene expression (Science)
Plant Science Research WeeklyWhen is a leaf not a leaf? When it’s a trap. Just about everyone, including Charles Darwin, has been fascinated by carnivory in plants, which involves the development of structures that capture or trap food. Whitewoods, Gonçalves, Cheng et al. investigated how traps form in the humped bladderwort…
Genetic contribution of paleopolyploidy to adaptive evolution in angiosperms (Mol Plant)
Plant Science Research Weekly
Genetic contribution of paleopolyploidy to adaptive evolution in angiosperms
Comparative genomics has revealed that the angiosperms have experienced numerous whole-genome duplications (WGD), which have been proposed to have contributed to their global dominance. Following WGD, many of the…
Penium margaritaceum genome bears footprints of evolutionary origins of land plants (bioRxiv)
Plant Science Research WeeklyThe Zygnematophyceae are the green algae that are most closely related to land plants. Some species in this clade are considered subaerial, meaning that they can live under air (as opposed to under water). The green films you see on tree trunks and walls are often Zygnematophycaea. Several new insights…
Genomes of subaerial Zygnematophyceae provide insights into land plant evolution ($) (Cell)
Plant Science Research WeeklyThe availability of charophyte algae genomic information is helping to understand how the plant transition to a terrestrial environment occurred at the molecular level. Here, Cheng et al. are releasing two genomes from the Zygnematophyceae clade (Spirogloea muscicola and Mesotaenium endlicherianum),…
A ligand-independent origin of abscisic acid perception ($) (PNAS)
Plant Science Research WeeklyThe origins of ABA signaling have long been puzzling. Green algae make ABA but don't respond to it, and ABA receptors have appeared to be missing from their genomes. Reccently, Sun et al. identified a gene encoding an ortholog of PYL family of ABA receptor proteins in the transcriptome of an alga from…