Journal article
Green land: Multiple perspectives on green algal evolution and the earliest land plants
American journal of botany, v 110(5)
May 2023
PMID: 37247371
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
Green plants, broadly defined as green algae and the land plants (together, Viridiplantae), constitute the primary eukaryotic lineage that successfully colonized Earth's emergent landscape. Members of various clades of green plants have independently made the transition from fully aquatic to subaerial habitats many times throughout Earth's history. The transition, from unicells or simple filaments to complex multicellular plant bodies with functionally differentiated tissues and organs, was accompanied by innovations built upon a genetic and phenotypic toolkit that have served aquatic green phototrophs successfully for at least a billion years. These innovations opened an enormous array of new, drier places to live on the planet and resulted in a huge diversity of land plants that have dominated terrestrial ecosystems over the past 500 million years. This review examines the greening of the land from several perspectives, from paleontology to phylogenomics, to water stress responses and the genetic toolkit shared by green algae and plants, to the genomic evolution of the sporophyte generation. We summarize advances on disparate fronts in elucidating this important event in the evolution of the biosphere and the lacunae in our understanding of it. We present the process not as a step‐by‐step advancement from primitive green cells to an inevitable success of embryophytes, but rather as a process of adaptations and exaptations that allowed multiple clades of green plants, with various combinations of morphological and physiological terrestrialized traits, to become diverse and successful inhabitants of the land habitats of Earth.
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Details
- Title
- Green land: Multiple perspectives on green algal evolution and the earliest land plants
- Creators
- Richard M. McCourt - Drexel UniversityLouise A. Lewis - University of ConnecticutPaul K. Strother - Boston CollegeCharles F. Delwiche - University of Maryland, College ParkNorman J. Wickett - Clemson UniversityJan Vries - University of GöttingenJohn L. Bowman - Monash University
- Publication Details
- American journal of botany, v 110(5)
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Number of pages
- 18
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Biodiversity, Earth, and Environmental Science (BEES); Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000996785300010
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85160479360
- Other Identifier
- 991020574276504721
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Plant Sciences