Plant evolution articles within Nature

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Phylogenomic analysis of 7,923 angiosperm species using a standardized set of 353 nuclear genes produced an angiosperm tree of life dated with 200 fossil calibrations, providing key insights into evolutionary relationships and diversification.

    • Alexandre R. Zuntini
    • , Tom Carruthers
    •  & William J. Baker

  • Article |

    Analysis of recurved cupules from a newly discovered Early Cretaceous silicified peat in Inner Mongolia, China and comparison with other potentially related Mesozoic plant fossils provides insight into the origins of angiosperms.

    • Gongle Shi
    • , Fabiany Herrera
    •  & Peter R. Crane

  • Article |

    Relationships between leaf size and vein architecture in more than 1,700 grass species worldwide show that grasses native to colder and drier climates have shorter and narrower leaves that provide them with physiological advantages.

    • Alec S. Baird
    • , Samuel H. Taylor
    •  & Lawren Sack

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The genome of the tropical blue-petal water lily Nymphaea colorata and the transcriptomes from 19 other Nymphaeales species provide insights into the early evolution of angiosperms.

    • Liangsheng Zhang
    • , Fei Chen
    •  & Haibao Tang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The One Thousand Plant Transcriptomes Initiative provides a robust phylogenomic framework for examining green plant evolution that comprises the transcriptomes and genomes of diverse species of green plants.

    • James H. Leebens-Mack
    • , Michael S. Barker
    •  & Gane Ka-Shu Wong

  • Letter |

    Species of the eukaryotic phylum Rhodelphidia are non-photosynthetic, flagellate predators with gene-rich genomes, in contrast to their closely related sister lineage—the red algae—which are immotile, typically photoautotrophic and have relatively small intron-poor genomes and reduced metabolism.

    • Ryan M. R. Gawryluk
    • , Denis V. Tikhonenkov
    •  & Patrick J. Keeling

  • Letter |

    Meristems of the rooting axes of Asteroxylon mackiei preserved in 407-million-year-old Rhynie chert lack root caps, which demonstrates that the evolution of the root systems of modern vascular plants occurred in a stepwise fashion.

    • Alexander J. Hetherington
    •  & Liam Dolan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The origin, evolution and domestication of Citrus and the genealogy of the most important wild and cultivated citrus varieties.

    • Guohong Albert Wu
    • , Javier Terol
    •  & Manuel Talon

  • Letter
    | Open Access

    A combination of advanced sequencing and mapping techniques is used to produce a reference genome of Aegilops tauschii, progenitor of the wheat D genome, providing a valuable resource for comparative genetic studies.

    • Ming-Cheng Luo
    • , Yong Q. Gu
    •  & Jan Dvořák

  • Letter
    | Open Access

    Whole-genome sequencing of the seagrass Zostera, representing the first marine angiosperm genome to be fully sequenced, provides insight into the evolutionary changes associated with a transition to a marine environment in this angiosperm lineage.

    • Jeanine L. Olsen
    • , Pierre Rouzé
    •  & Yves Van de Peer

  • Letter
    | Open Access

    Oropetium thomaeum is a resurrection plant that can survive extreme water stress through desiccation to complete dryness, providing a model for drought tolerance; here, whole-genome sequencing and assembly of the Oropetium genome using single-molecule real-time sequencing is reported.

    • Robert VanBuren
    • , Doug Bryant
    •  & Todd C. Mockler

  • Letter |

    The formation of a new species can occur by an asexual mechanism by transfer of entire nuclear genomes between plant cells as shown by the creation of a new allopolyploid plant from parental herbaceous and woody plant species, this mechanism is a potential new tool for crop improvement.

    • Ignacia Fuentes
    • , Sandra Stegemann
    •  & Ralph Bock

  • Letter |

    This large comparative phylogenetic study across angiosperms shows that species that are herbaceous or have small conduits evolved these traits before colonizing environments with freezing conditions, whereas deciduous species changed their climate niche before becoming deciduous.

    • Amy E. Zanne
    • , David C. Tank
    •  & Jeremy M. Beaulieu

  • Letter
    | Open Access

    The genome sequence and its analysis of the diploid wild wheat Triticum urartu (progenitor of the wheat A genome) represent a tool for studying the complex, polyploid wheat genomes and should be a valuable resource for the genetic improvement of wheat.

    • Hong-Qing Ling
    • , Shancen Zhao
    •  & Jun Wang

  • Letter
    | Open Access

    Sequencing and analysing the diploid genome and transcriptome of Aegilops tauschii provide new insights into the role of this genome in enabling the adaptation of bread wheat and are a step towards understanding the very large and complicated hexaploid genomes of wheat species.

    • Jizeng Jia
    • , Shancen Zhao
    •  & Jun Wang

  • Letter |

    The diffusion limited stereospecific enzyme chalcone isomerase represents the adaptive evolution of a catalytically perfected enzyme from non-catalytic, fatty-acid-binding proteins (FAPs) with contemporary roles in plant fatty-acid metabolism as evidenced by altered fatty acid content and marked reproductive defects in Arabidopsis thaliana plants bearing FAP knockouts.

    • Micheline N. Ngaki
    • , Gordon V. Louie
    •  & Joseph P. Noel

  • News & Views |

    The uncovering of a large soil surface preserved under sediment for 390 million years has exposed plant remains which show that the world's earliest forests were much more complex than previously thought. See Letter p.78

    • Brigitte Meyer-Berthaud
    •  & Anne-Laure Decombeix

  • News |

    A genetic analysis reveals the ancient, complex — and symbiotic — roots of photosynthesis in plants.

    • David Biello

  • Letter |

    The early history of flowering plants (angiosperms) is contentious. However, many fossils attributable to flowering plants have been found in the Early Cretaceous of China. The plant reported in this study goes a step further: not only is it an angiosperm, but it is a member of a relatively derived group, the eudicots, and possibly a member of the Ranunculaceae, an extant family of plants. This indicates that angiosperm evolution probably got into its stride even earlier than the Early Cretaceous.

    • Ge Sun
    • , David L. Dilcher
    •  & Zhiduan Chen

  • News & Views |

    Theoretical analyses reveal how plant investment in the architecture of leaf veins can be shuffled for different conditions, minimizing the construction costs associated with supplying water to leaves.

    • David J. Beerling
    •  & Peter J. Franks

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