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Comparative transcriptomic analysis reveals conserved programmes underpinning organogenesis and reproduction in land plants

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posted on 2021-08-23, 07:06 authored by Irene Julca, Camilla Ferrari, Maria Flores-Tornero, Sebastian Proost, Ann-Cathrin Lindner, Dieter Hackenberg, Lenka Steinbachova, Christos Michaelidis, Sonia Gomes Pereira, Chandra Shekhar Misra, Tomokazu Kawashima, Michael Borg, Frederic Berger, Jacob Goldberg, Mark Johnson, David Honys, David Twell, Stefanie Sprunck, Thomas Dresselhaus, Joerg D Becker, Marek Mutwil
The appearance of plant organs mediated the explosive radiation of land plants, which shaped the biosphere and allowed the establishment of terrestrial animal life. The evolution of organs and immobile gametes required the coordinated acquisition of novel gene functions, the co-option of existing genes and the development of novel regulatory programmes. However, no large-scale analyses of genomic and transcriptomic data have been performed for land plants. To remedy this, we generated gene expression atlases for various organs and gametes of ten plant species comprising bryophytes, vascular plants, gymnosperms and flowering plants. A comparative analysis of the atlases identified hundreds of organ- and gamete-specific orthogroups and revealed that most of the specific transcriptomes are significantly conserved. Interestingly, our results suggest that co-option of existing genes is the main mechanism for evolving new organs. In contrast to female gametes, male gametes showed a high number and conservation of specific genes, which indicates that male reproduction is highly specialized. The expression atlas capturing pollen development revealed numerous transcription factors and kinases essential for pollen biogenesis and function.

History

Citation

Nat. Plants 7, 1143–1159 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-021-00958-2

Author affiliation

Department of Genetics and Genome Biology

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Published in

Nature Plants

Volume

7

Pagination

1143–1159

Publisher

Nature Research (part of Springer Nature)

issn

2055-026X

eissn

2055-0278

Acceptance date

2021-06-02

Copyright date

2021

Available date

2022-01-12

Spatial coverage

England

Language

English

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