Sainsbury 4-year PhD studentship available: The evolution of plant body plans.

A major goal in biology is to identify the genetic changes that underpinned the evolution of morphological novelty.

Plants colonized land over 450 million years ago and underwent independent radiations in body plan in both the haploid (gametophyte) and diploid (sporophyte) stages of the life cycle during evolution [1].

The earliest land plants had gametophyte dominant life cycles and principally colonized space by spreading across planar surfaces, and a capacity for three dimensional shoot growth was a key innovation in gametophyte evolution. The rise of the vascular plants was accompanied by suite of sporophytic innovations including branching and indeterminate shoot growth.

By modifying moss development using reverse genetics, Dr Harrison’s lab has recently identified mutations causing a defective 2D to 3D transition in a moss, and mutations that can induce sporophytic branching [2, 3].

Your project will build on these advances to identify molecular determinants of body plan in early diverging land plant lineages.

Please contact Jill if you would like to apply for this studentship (cjh97@cam.ac.uk); Cambridge students also welcome to discuss!

[1] Pires and Dolan (2012). Morphological evolution in land plants: new designs with old genes. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. 367: 508-518.

[2] Bennett et al. (2014a). Plasma membrane targeted PIN proteins regulate shoot development in a moss. Current Biology 24: 1-10.

[3] Bennett et al. (2014b). Paralogous radiations of PIN proteins with multiple origins of non-canonical PIN structure. Molecular Biology and Evolution (doi:molbev.msu147).

250 Great Minds at the University of Leeds

Dr Harrison presented new results on the early evolution of branching mechanisms in land plants at the University of Leeds.

The University has instigated a major recruitment drive (see http://250greatminds.leeds.ac.uk/) at all levels from PhD to PI to address major strategic challenges in Biology. It will appoint with cross complementarity between departments to address then, and is starting to talk to interested parties- an exciting opportunity for change!

paper out :-)

Dr Yoan Coudert awarded SEB travel grant

Dr Yoan Coudert has been awarded funds from the SEB and COB to go to the CNRS French Institute of Pondicherry, India) next year.

He will attend a training course on 'plant architectural analysis' using methods described in Barthélémy and Caraglio (2007).

Yoan will apply the methods that he learns to study architectural diversification in mosses, and will map the architectural traits that he characterizes onto moss phylogenies to understand how moss architectures evolved.

The results will prime future functional work to identify the genetic basis of architectural diversification.

Plasma membrane targeted PIN proteins regulate shoot development in a moss on line at Current Biology (http://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822%2814%2901217-2.pdf).

The plant hormone auxin is a key regulator of plant development, with roles in meristem function, leaf initiation and vascular patterning that are conserved within the vascular plants. In Arabidopsis, many papers have identified pivotal contributions of PIN-FORMED gene family members to auxin action by regulating auxin transport either between or within cells. Whilst ‘long’ PINs that localize to the plasma membrane regulate intercellular transport, ‘short’ PINs that localize to the ER regulate intracellular auxin levels.

Contrary to previous suggestions that only ER-targeted PINs function in early diverging land plant lineages, we have shown that PINs in the moss Physcomitrella have polar localizations at the plasma membrane.

We have demonstrated roles for polar auxin transport in leaf development and meristem function in gametophytic leafy shoots. We have also found that disrupting PIN function can lead to sporophytic branching.

This result is exciting in the context of the innovation of the earliest sporophytic branching forms in land plants, as it reproduces a form only seen before in the fossil record and rare natural moss variants, thereby suggesting a role for PIN-mediated auxin transport in the evolution of branching.

Our paper is back to back with a complementary paper from Jiri Friml’s lab which complements ours by demonstrating that moss PINs can transport auxin, and presents evidence of PIN functions in the development of filamentous tissues.

Graduate News: Life changes for Chris White

In the past month Chris White has got married, changed his name, moved house, passed his viva and taken up his first post-doc position in Enrico Coen’s lab (JIC) with a 4, not 2 wheeled commute- a wholehearted progression from student days! Many congratulations from the lab on all of these to Chris, with an open invitation to regress!

‘Apical growth in a moss’ shortlisted for BBSRC Images with Impact competition.

Voting for the BBSRC’s Images with Impact competition is online today at http://bbsrc2014.picturk.com/, and my entry ‘apical growth in a moss’ has been shortlisted.
 In plants the overall shape reflects the pattern of branching, the pattern of leaf initiation and the relative growth of leaves initiated from the growing tip. These traits impact strongly on plant productivity because they affect light interception during photosynthesis. 

 The aquatic algal relatives of the land were constrained to filamentous or mat-like planar forms, and a capacity to generate upright leafy shoots was gained as plants colonized land. This evolutionary transition is mirrored during normal development in modern mosses when leafy shoots initiate from a filamentous precursor tissue. 

My lab aims to understand the developmental and genetic changes that allowed plants to gain new growth habits and radiate on land. 

My entry shows the tip of a moss shoot in which the triangular apical stem cell has been exposed due to a hormone treatment that prevents leaves from developing. The results suggest a key role for plant hormones in the evolution of shoots and leaves. 

The image was taken with a Zeiss confocal laser scanning microscope and my lab is funded by the BBSRC (BB/L00224811).

Deep sequencing coming for three taxa at key phylogenetic nodes

Following his recent visit to Cambridge, Josh Mylne (University of Western Australia) will be collaborating with Jill Harrison (Cambridge) and Kingsley Dixon (Perth Botanic Garden) to sequence the transcriptomes of three rare taxa at key phylogenetic nodes.

Kingsley recently collected the lycophytes Phylloglossum drummondii and Isoetes drummondii and the basal angiosperm representative Trithuria bibracteata from Alison Baird Reserve, Kenwick in Western Australia this week (Figure 1).

Although lycophytes formed the dominant land plant tree flora in coal swamps that existed over 300 million years ago^[1], they are now small herbs forming three distinct relict lineages^[2]. Whilst club mosses such as Phylloglossum comprise c. 400 species, spike mosses such as Selaginella comprise c.700 species and quillworts such as Isoetes comprise c. 150 species.

As the evolutionary divergence of these three lineages was ancient, and the taxa sampled are rare, the new sequence data will be useful in comparative and phylogenetic studies that seek to sample densely at the base of the plant tree of life to minimize long branch artefacts.

Phylloglossum also has corms, organs with a unique ‘fuzzy morphology’ and root/shoot-like identity^[3]. The new sequence data will be helpful to future evo-devo projects aiming to determine homologies.

In contrast, Trithuria comprises just 12 species and sits at a key evolutionary divergence point higher up the plant tree of life. It is an aquatic angiosperm placed in the family Hydatellaceae, one of three families in the basal angiosperm order Nymphales^[4].

Trithuria differs from other water lilies in that it is tiny with narrow grass-like leaves, and the flowers may not be homologous to other angiosperm flowers, having an ‘inside out’ floral whorl arrangement^[5].

Again, the new sequence data will be useful in future systematic and evo-devo studies.

To access the raw reads or de novo assembled transcriptomes when they become available please contact Josh Mylne at joshua.mylne@uwa.edu.au.

Further reading

[1]            Taylor et al. (2009). Palaeobotany: The biology and evolution of fossil plants. Academic Press, Burlington.

[2]             Pryer et al. (2001). Horsetails and ferns are a monophyletic group and the closest living relatives to seed plants.   Nature 409: 618-622.

[3]           Bower FO. 1885 On the development and morphology of Phylloglossum drummondii. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 176:665–678

[4]             Saarela et al. (2007). Hydatellaceae identified as a new branch near the base of the angiosperm phylogenetic tree. Nature 446, 312-315.

[5]           Rudall et al. (2009). Nonflowers near the base of extant angiosperms? Spatiotemporal arrangement of organs in reproductive units of Hydatellaceae and its bearing on the origin of the flower. American Journal of Botany 96:67-82.

Paper accepted: PIN proteins regulate shoot development in a moss.

We got our paper on moss PIN function accepted for publication in Current Biology; hoping to see it out later this year!

Yoan Coudert awarded British Bryological Society Bequest Grant

The evolution of branch patterning in mosses.  

Lateral branching systems have undergone 450 million years of independent evolution in flowering plant sporophytes and bryophyte gametophytes, yet the mechanisms underpinning convergent branching morphologies are unknown.

Yoan aims to identify the mechanisms that pattern branching in mosses and determine how patterns changed during moss diversification using computational modelling and morphological character mapping.

Yoan has been awarded a British Bryological Society Bequest Grant to support this work in a new collaboration with Silvia Pressel and Jeff Duckett (NHM).

Congratulations Yoan!

Graduate News: Jeremy Solly awarded two prizes

Jeremy helped to organise this year's Norwich-Cambridge Student Symposium (NoCASS), and was awarded a prize for his poster presentation 'Three simple rules to grow a liverwort'.

Jeremy was also awarded a Departmental prize for delivery of his final year seminar, which will contribute towards the cost of thesis publication.

Bennett and Brockington et al. published in Molecular Biology and Evolution (doi: 10.1093/molbev/msu147)

The plant hormone auxin is a key regulator of plant development, with roles in meristem function, leaf initiation and vascular patterning that are conserved within the vascular plants. In Arabidopsis, many papers have identified pivotal contributions of PIN-FORMED gene family members to auxin action by regulating auxin transport either between or within cells. Whilst ‘long’ PINs that localize to the plasma membrane regulate intercellular transport, ‘short’ PINs that localize to the ER regulate intracellular auxin levels. Three recent papers suggest ‘short’ PINs were ancestral within the land plants [1-3] but the data are inconsistent with reports of intercellular auxin transport in algae or early diverging land plant lineages [4,5].

In this paper, 'Paralagous radiations of PIN proteins with multiple origins of non-canonical PIN structure' we have taken advantage of a new sequencing project (http://onekp.com/project.html) to sample the PIN gene family to an unprecedented level. We have identified motifs circumscribing canonical PINs, and predict that all canonical PINs are plasma membrane localized intercellular auxin transporters. Non-canonical PINs have major structural distinctions from this template and may have divergent sub-cellular localizations. Our phylogeny is the first gene family phylogeny to emerge form the 1KP sequencing project and completely overturns previous hypotheses of PIN protein evolution. It shows that canonical PINs are likely to be ancestral, and vascular plant PINs diversified from a single canonical ancestor. Non-canonical PINs evolved many times from canonical precursors. 

Our results will be of major interest to the plant development, evo-devo, and auxin communities as they indicate that the earliest land plants are likely to have had a capacity for intercellular auxin transport by PINs with plasma membrane targeting. The data reconcile the discrepancy in the literature identified above, and identify PIN proteins as key potential contributors to plant evolution. 

[1] Krecek et al. (2009) The PIN-FORMED (PIN) protein family of auxin transporters. Genome Biology, 10:1-11.

[2] Mravec et al. (2009) Subcellular homeostasis of phytohormone auxin is mediated by the ER-localized PIN5 transporter. Nature 459:1136-1140.

[3] Viaene et al. (2013). Origin and evolution of PIN auxin transporters in the green lineage. Trends in Plant Science 18: 5-10.

[4] Boot et al. (2012). Polar auxin transport: an early invention. Journal of Experimental Botany. 63: 4213–4218.

[5] Fujita et al. (2008). Convergent evolution of shoots in land plants: lack of auxin polar transport in moss shoots. Evolution & Development 10: 176–186.

Graduate news: Joe Cammarata, who completed an MRes with us last year, has accepted an offer from Cornell to join their PhD rotation programme. Congratulations Joe!