The tremendous diversity of land plants all descended from a single charophyte green alga that colonized the land somewhere between 430 and 470 million years ago. Six orders of charophyte green ...algae, in addition to embryophytes, comprise the Streptophyta s.l. Previous studies have focused on reconstructing the phylogeny of organisms tied to this key colonization event, but wildly conflicting results have sparked a contentious debate over which lineage gave rise to land plants. The dominant view has been that 'stoneworts,' or Charales, are the sister lineage, but an alternative hypothesis supports the Zygnematales (often referred to as "pond scum") as the sister lineage. In this paper, we provide a well-supported, 160-nuclear-gene phylogenomic analysis supporting the Zygnematales as the closest living relative to land plants. Our study makes two key contributions to the field: 1) the use of an unbiased method to collect a large set of orthologs from deeply diverging species and 2) the use of these data in determining the sister lineage to land plants. We anticipate this updated phylogeny not only will hugely impact lesson plans in introductory biology courses, but also will provide a solid phylogenetic tree for future green-lineage research, whether it be related to plants or green algae.
Grappling with algal biodiversity Delwiche, Charles F.
Journal of phycology,
December 2023, 2023-12-00, 20231201, Letnik:
59, Številka:
6
Journal Article
A newly isolated cyanobacterium found growing in close association with a tropical, non-vascular plant has been cultured and its genome sequenced. Its lineage is well over a billion years old and ...gives insights into the evolutionary origin of oxygenic photosynthesis.
A newly isolated cyanobacterium found growing in close association with a tropical, non-vascular plant has been cultured and its genome sequenced. Its lineage is well over a billion years old and gives insights into the evolutionary origin of oxygenic photosynthesis.
The emergence and radiation of multicellular land plants was driven by crucial innovations to their body plans 1. The directional transport of the phytohormone auxin represents a key, plant-specific ...mechanism for polarization and patterning in complex seed plants 2–5. Here, we show that already in the early diverging land plant lineage, as exemplified by the moss Physcomitrella patens, auxin transport by PIN transporters is operational and diversified into ER-localized and plasma membrane-localized PIN proteins. Gain-of-function and loss-of-function analyses revealed that PIN-dependent intercellular auxin transport in Physcomitrella mediates crucial developmental transitions in tip-growing filaments and waves of polarization and differentiation in leaf-like structures. Plasma membrane PIN proteins localize in a polar manner to the tips of moss filaments, revealing an unexpected relation between polarization mechanisms in moss tip-growing cells and multicellular tissues of seed plants. Our results trace the origins of polarization and auxin-mediated patterning mechanisms and highlight the crucial role of polarized auxin transport during the evolution of multicellular land plants.
•PIN-mediated auxin transport is operational in the moss Physcomitrella patens•Plasma membrane PIN proteins localize in a polar manner in gametophytic tissue•Intercellular auxin transport mediates key developmental decisions in Physcomitrella
Viaene et al. show in the moss Physcomitrella patens that PIN-mediated auxin transport mediates crucial developmental transitions in tip-growing filaments and waves of polarization and differentiation in leaf-like structures.
The evolution of streptophytes had a profound impact on life on Earth. They brought forth those photosynthetic eukaryotes that today dominate the macroscopic flora: the land plants (Embryophyta).1 ...There is convincing evidence that the unicellular/filamentous Zygnematophyceae—and not the morphologically more elaborate Coleochaetophyceae or Charophyceae—are the closest algal relatives of land plants.2,3,4,5,6 Despite the species richness (>4,000), wide distribution, and key evolutionary position of the zygnematophytes, their internal phylogeny remains largely unresolved.7,8 There are also putative zygnematophytes with interesting body plan modifications (e.g., filamentous growth) whose phylogenetic affiliations remain unknown. Here, we studied a filamentous green alga (strain MZCH580) from an Austrian peat bog with central or parietal chloroplasts that lack discernible pyrenoids. It represents Mougeotiopsis calospora PALLA, an enigmatic alga that was described more than 120 years ago9 but never subjected to molecular analyses. We generated transcriptomic data of M. calospora strain MZCH580 and conducted comprehensive phylogenomic analyses (326 nuclear loci) for 46 taxonomically diverse zygnematophytes. Strain MZCH580 falls in a deep-branching zygnematophycean clade together with some unicellular species and thus represents a formerly unknown zygnematophycean lineage with filamentous growth. Our well-supported phylogenomic tree lets us propose a new five-order system for the Zygnematophyceae and provides evidence for at least five independent origins of true filamentous growth in the closest algal relatives of land plants. This phylogeny provides a robust and comprehensive framework for performing comparative analyses and inferring the evolution of cellular traits and body plans in the closest relatives of land plants.
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•Comprehensive phylogenomic analyses for 46 taxonomically diverse Zygnematophyceae•Five-order system for the Zygnematophyceae, the closest relatives of land plants•Filamentous and pyrenoid-lacking Mougeotiopsis sits in a deep clade of unicells•Evidence for at least five independent origins of true filamentous growth
Hess et al. use comprehensive phylogenomic analyses and present a five-order system for the Zygnematophyceae. They place the filamentous and pyrenoid-lacking Mougeotiopsis among unicellular zygnematophytes. Based on this framework, they propose at least five independent origins of true filamentous growth for the closest relatives of land plants.
Dinoflagellates are key species in marine environments, but they remain poorly understood in part because of their large, complex genomes, unique molecular biology, and unresolved in-group ...relationships. We created a taxonomically representative dataset of dinoflagellate transcriptomes and used this to infer a strongly supported phylogeny to map major morphological and molecular transitions in dinoflagellate evolution. Our results show an earlybranching position of Noctiluca, monophyly of thecate (plate-bearing) dinoflagellates, and paraphyly of athecate ones. This represents unambiguous phylogenetic evidence for a single origin of the group’s cellulosic theca, which we show coincided with a radiation of cellulases implicated in cell division. By integrating dinoflagellate molecular, fossil, and biogeochemical evidence, we propose a revised model for the evolution of thecal tabulations and suggest that the late acquisition of dinosterol in the group is inconsistent with dinoflagellates being the source of this biomarker in pre-Mesozoic strata. Three distantly related, fundamentally nonphotosynthetic dinoflagellates, Noctiluca, Oxyrrhis, and Dinophysis, contain cryptic plastidial metabolisms and lack alternative cytosolic pathways, suggesting that all free-living dinoflagellates are metabolically dependent on plastids. This finding led us to propose general mechanisms of dependency on plastid organelles in eukaryotes that have lost photosynthesis; it also suggests that the evolutionary origin of bioluminescence in nonphotosynthetic dinoflagellates may be linked to plastidic tetrapyrrole biosynthesis. Finally, we use our phylogenetic framework to show that dinoflagellate nuclei have recruited DNA-binding proteins in three distinct evolutionary waves, which included two independent acquisitions of bacterial histone-like proteins.
Polarized auxin transport is crucial for many developmental processes in flowering plants and requires the PIN-FORMED (PIN) family of auxin efflux carriers. However, the impact of polar auxin ...transport and PIN proteins on the development of non-seed plant species and green algal lineages is largely unknown. Using recently available sequence information from streptophyte algae and other non-seed plant species, we have constructed a preliminary phylogenetic framework and present several hypotheses for PIN protein evolution. We postulate that PIN proteins originated in streptophyte algae at the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and that plasma membrane localization was acquired during land plant evolution. We also suggest that PIN proteins are evolutionarily distinct from another family of auxin transporters at the ER, the PIN-LIKES (PILS) proteins.
• The aims of this study were to investigate the appearance of strigolactones in the green lineage and to determine the primitive function of these molecules. • We measured the strigolactone content ...of several isolated liverworts, mosses, charophyte and chlorophyte green algae using a sensitive biological assay and LC‐MS/MS analyses. In parallel, sequence comparison of strigolactone‐related genes and phylogenetic analyses were performed using available genomic data and newly sequenced expressed sequence tags. The primitive function of strigolactones was determined by exogenous application of the synthetic strigolactone analog, GR24, and by mutant phenotyping. • Liverworts, the most basal Embryophytes and Charales, one of the closest green algal relatives to Embryophytes, produce strigolactones, whereas several other species of green algae do not. We showed that GR24 stimulates rhizoid elongation of Charales, liverworts and mosses, and rescues the phenotype of the strigolactone‐deficient Ppccd8 mutant of Physcomitrella patens. • These findings demonstrate that the first function of strigolactones was not to promote arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis. Rather, they suggest that the strigolactones appeared earlier in the streptophyte lineage to control rhizoid elongation. They may have been conserved in basal Embryophytes for this role and then recruited for the stimulation of colonization by glomeromycotan fungi.
The large and diverse land plant lineage is nested within a clade of fresh water green algae, the charophytes. Collection of genome-scale data for land plants and other organisms over the past decade ...has invigorated the field of evolutionary biology. One of the core questions in the field asks: how did a colonization event by a green algae over 450 mya lead to one of the most successful lineages on the tree of life? This question can best be answered using the comparative method, the first step of which is to gather genome-scale data across closely related lineages to land plants. Before sequencing an entire genome it is useful to first gather transcriptome data: it is less expensive, it targets the protein coding regions of the genome, and provides support for gene models for future genome sequencing. We built Expressed Sequence Tag (EST) libraries for two charophyte species, Coleochaete orbicularis (Coleochaetales) and Spirogyra pratensis (Zygnematales). We used both Sanger sequencing and next generation 454 sequencing to cover as much of the transcriptome as possible.
Our sequencing effort for Spirogyra pratensis yielded 9,984 5' Sanger reads plus 598,460 GS FLX Standard 454 sequences; Coleochaete orbicularis yielded 4,992 5' Sanger reads plus 673,811 GS FLX Titanium 454 sequences. After clustering S. pratensis yielded 12,000 unique transcripts, or unigenes, and C. orbicularis yielded 19,000. Both transcriptomes were very plant-like, i.e. most of the transcripts were more similar to streptophytes (land plants + charophyte green algae) than to other green algae in the sister group chlorophytes. BLAST results of several land plant genes hypothesized to be important in early land plant evolution resulted in high quality hits in both transcriptomes revealing putative orthologs ripe for follow-up studies.
Two main conclusions were drawn from this study. One illustrates the utility of next generation sequencing for transcriptome studies: larger scale data collection at a lower cost enabled us to cover a considerable portion of the transcriptome for both species. And, two, that the charophyte green algal transcriptoms are remarkably plant-like, which gives them the unique capacity to be major players for future evolutionary genomic studies addressing origin of land plant questions.
The Viridiplantae (green plants) include land plants as well as the two distinct lineages of green algae, chlorophytes and charophytes. Despite their critical importance for identifying the closest ...living relatives of land plants, phylogenetic studies of charophytes have provided equivocal results 1–5. In addition, many relationships remain unresolved among the land plants, such as the position of mosses, liverworts, and the enigmatic Gnetales. Phylogenomics has proven to be an insightful approach for resolving challenging phylogenetic issues, particularly concerning deep nodes 6–8. Here we extend this approach to the green lineage by assembling a multilocus data set of 77 nuclear genes (12,149 unambiguously aligned amino acid positions) from 77 taxa of plants. We therefore provide the first multigene phylogenetic evidence that Coleochaetales represent the closest living relatives of land plants. Moreover, our data reinforce the early divergence of liverworts and the close relationship between Gnetales and Pinaceae. These results provide a new phylogenetic framework and represent a key step in the evolutionary interpretation of developmental and genomic characters in green plants.
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► First broad nuclear multigene phylogeny resolving the green lineage ► Gnetales are closely related to Pinaceae among gymnosperms ► Coleochaetales identified as the closest living relatives of land plants
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