Developmental evolution of sex-specific mechanisms underlying the Retinoblastoma pathway in the control of gametic cell fate and differentiation in plants

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It is an enigma how the highly specialised higher plants of today evolved from lower plants or other early life forms. Whereas the haploid leafy gametophyte dominated in lower lineages such as mosses (eg. Physcomitrella), the flowering plants (e.g. Arabidopsis) have a dominant diploid leafy sporophyte and dependent gamete-bearing haploid gametophytes, which are also known as the male and female germlines. Concomitant with the shift in dominance from gametophyte to sporophyte along the evolution of the land plants from Paleozoic to Cenozoic era, neo- and/or subfunctionalisation in gene regulatory networks is anticipated. The proposed Emmy Noether research group will examine how patterning and cell differentiation of germlines regulated by evolutionarily ancient transcription factor modules co-evolved in two divergent plant model systems Arabidopsis and Physcomitrella. In particular, adaptive evolution of sex-specific, genetic and epigenetic mechanisms underlying plant Retinoblastoma regulatory pathways during germline development will be investigated.