Abstract Detail

Botany 2015 Colloquium: Phylogenomics and the 1000 plants (1KP) initiative 

Sessa, Emily Butler [1], Szovenyi, Peter [2], Graham, Sean W. [3], Stevenson, Dennis [4], Wolf, Paul [5], Rothfels, Carl [6], Li, Fay-Wei [7], Wong, Gane Ka-Shu [8], Der, Joshua [9].

Gametophyte vs. sporophyte dominance and accompanying changes in gene content across land plants.

When we consider land plants as a whole, several of the most striking differences between the major lineages include dramatic changes in relative size, function, and duration of the gametophyte and sporophyte stages of the life cycle. Across land plants, there is a transition from a dominant gametophyte with dependent sporophyte in the bryophytes, to independent gametophytes and dominant sporophytes in the lycophytes and ferns, to a highly reduced, ephemeral, and dependent gametophyte in the seed plants, particularly in angiosperms. This life history transition is accompanied by numerous innovations in both sporophyte and gametophyte morphology and ecology. The production of two such divergent organisms from a single genome raises fundamental questions about the genetics underlying development of the two stages. Are gametophyte and sporophyte development controlled by the same genes, with different expression patterns? Or by different sets of genes activated at different stages of development? And what are the genetic underpinnings of the shift from gametophyte dominance to sporophyte dominance that occurred during the evolution of tracheophytes? We are accumulating paired gametophyte and sporophyte samples from individual species representing all the lineages of vascular plants in order to shed light on these questions, and present preliminary data from several groups that suggest particular categories of genes appear to be enriched in gametophytes relative to sporophytes, or vice versa.

1 - University Of Florida, Department of Biology, Box 118525, Gainesville, FL, 32611, USA
2 - University of Zurich, Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, Winterthurerstr. 190, Zurich, CH-8057, Switzerland
3 - University of British Columbia, Department of Botany, 3529-6270 University Blvd., Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada
4 - The NY Botanical Garden, 2900 Southern Blvd, Bronx, NY, 10458-5126, USA
5 - Utah State University, Department Of Biology, 5305 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT, 84322-5305, USA
6 - University of California, Berkeley, University Herbarium and Dept. of Integrative Biology, Berkeley, CA, 94720-2465, USA
7 - Duke University, Department of Biology, Durham, NC, 27708, USA
8 - University of Alberta, Biological Sciences; Medicine (Gastroenterology), CW405 Biological Sciences, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E9, Canada
9 - California State University, Fullerton, Department of Biological Science, Fullerton, CA, 92831, USA

Keywords:
gametophyte
sporophyte
tracheophyte
Bryophyte
gene expression
transcriptomics.

Presentation Type: Colloquium Presentations
Session: C1
Location: Salon 4/The Shaw Conference Centre
Date: Monday, July 27th, 2015
Time: 11:15 AM
Number: C1014
Abstract ID:300
Candidate for Awards:None