Transcriptional Landscapes of Divergent Sporophyte Development in Two Mosses, Physcomitrium (Physcomitrella) patens and Funaria hygrometrica
Transcriptional Landscapes of Divergent Sporophyte Development in Two Mosses, Physcomitrium (Physcomitrella) patens and Funaria hygrometrica
复制标题
DOI：
10.3389/fpls.2020.00747
复制
发表时间：
2020-06
影响因子：
5.6
通讯作者：
Alexander Kirbis;Manuel Waller;M. Ricca;Zoe Bont;Anna Neubauer;B. Goffinet;P. Szövényi
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Alexander Kirbis;Manuel Waller;M. Ricca;Zoe Bont;Anna Neubauer;B. Goffinet;P. Szövényi
了解形态变化的分子基础是进化生物学的一个基本问题。新的形态可以通过基因的诞生/死亡(基因的获得/丢失)或通过重新利用现有的基因组来产生。然而，这两个过程对根本性形态转变的相对贡献仍然知之甚少。在这里，我们使用两个苔藓模型系统，Funaria hygrometrica和Physcomitrium(Physcomitrella)Patens，来研究不同孢子体构型背后的分子机制。我们使用了两个物种孢子体发育的四个阶段的时间序列表达数据的比较分析来详细地解决这个问题。我们发现，孢子体结构的大规模差异主要是由两个物种之间频繁经历时间基因表达转移的同源(即共享)基因决定的。虽然在孢子体发育过程中表达的物种特异性基因的绝对数量较少，但我们观察到它们在孢子体优先表达的基因中所占比例显著增加，这表明它们在孢子体发育阶段发挥着重要作用。然而，进一步的功能研究是必要的，以确定它们对不同孢子体形态的贡献。我们的结果增加了越来越多的研究，表明形态上的根本性变化可能依赖于保守调控因子的异时表达。
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.