Transcriptional Landscapes of Divergent Sporophyte Development in Two Mosses, Physcomitrium (Physcomitrella) patens and Funaria hygrometrica

Kirbis, Alexander; Waller, Manuel; Ricca, Mariana; Bont, Zoe; Neubauer, Anna; Goffinet, Bernard; Szövényi, Péter (2020). Transcriptional Landscapes of Divergent Sporophyte Development in Two Mosses, Physcomitrium (Physcomitrella) patens and Funaria hygrometrica. Frontiers in Plant Science, 11(747), p. 747. Frontiers 10.3389/fpls.2020.00747

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Understanding the molecular basis of morphological shifts is a fundamental question of evolutionary biology. New morphologies may arise through the birth/death of genes (gene gain/loss) or by reutilizing existing gene sets. Yet, the relative contribution of these two processes to radical morphological shifts is still poorly understood. Here, we use the model system of two mosses, Funaria hygrometrica and Physcomitrium (Physcomitrella) patens, to investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying contrasting sporophyte architectures. We used comparative analysis of time-series expression data for four stages of sporophyte development in both species to address this question in detail. We found that large-scale differences in sporophytic architecture are mainly governed by orthologous (i.e., shared) genes frequently experiencing temporal gene expression shifts between the two species. While the absolute number of species-specific genes expressed during sporophyte development is somewhat smaller, we observed a significant increase of their proportion in preferentially sporophyte expressed genes, suggesting a fundamental role in the sporophyte phase. However, further functional studies are necessary to determine their contribution to diverging sporophyte morphologies. Our results add to the growing set of studies suggesting that radical changes in morphology may rely on the heterochronic expression of conserved regulators.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

04 Faculty of Medicine > Pre-clinic Human Medicine > BioMedical Research (DBMR)
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS) > Biotic Interactions
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS)

UniBE Contributor:

Ricca, Mariana, Bont, Zoe Kalina

Subjects:

600 Technology > 610 Medicine & health
500 Science > 580 Plants (Botany)

ISSN:

1664-462X

Publisher:

Frontiers

Language:

English

Submitter:

Peter Alfred von Ballmoos-Haas

Date Deposited:

16 Jul 2020 09:11

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 15:39

Publisher DOI:

10.3389/fpls.2020.00747

PubMed ID:

32587596

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.145132

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/145132

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