600M years of shared environmental stress response found in algae and plants

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The star-shaped algae Zygnema circumcarinatum shows similar stress reactions to the moss (microscope image). Credit: Tatyana Darienko Without plants on land, humans could not live on Earth. From mosses to ferns to grasses to trees, plants are our food, fodder and timber. All this diversity emerged from an algal ancestor that conquered land long ago. The success of land plants is surprising because it is a challenging habitat. On land, rapid shifts in environmental conditions lead to stress, and plants have developed an elaborate molecular machinery for sensing and responding. Now, a research team led by the University of Göttingen has compared algae and plants that span 600 million years of independent evolution and pinpointed a shared stress response network using advanced bioinformatic methods. The resu ... Read full article.