Life Sciences Commons^™

Insights Into Land Plant Evolution Garnered From The Marchantia Polymorpha Genome, John L. Bowman, Takayuki Kohchi, Katsuyuki T. Yamato, Jerry Jenkins, Shengqiang Shu, Kimitsune Ishizaki, Shohei Yamaoka, Ryuichi Nishihama, Yasukazu Nakamura, Frédéric Berger, Catherine Adam, Shiori Sugamata Aki, Felix Althoff, Takashi Araki, Mario A. Arteaga-Vazquez, Sureshkumar Balasubrmanian, Kerrie Barry, Diane Bauer, Christian R. Boehm, Liam Briginshaw, Juan Caballero-Perez, Bruno Catarino, Feng Chen, Shota Chiyoda, Mansi Chovatia, Kevin M. Davies, Mihails Delmans, Taku Demura, Tom Dierschke, Liam Dolan, Tomokazu Kawashima

Plant and Soil Sciences Faculty Publications

The evolution of land flora transformed the terrestrial environment. Land plants evolved from an ancestral charophycean alga from which they inherited developmental, biochemical, and cell biological attributes. Additional biochemical and physiological adaptations to land, and a life cycle with an alternation between multicellular haploid and diploid generations that facilitated efficient dispersal of desiccation tolerant spores, evolved in the ancestral land plant. We analyzed the genome of the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha, a member of a basal land plant lineage. Relative to charophycean algae, land plant genomes are characterized by genes encoding novel biochemical pathways, new phytohormone signaling pathways (notably auxin), …