Evolution: fungi helped plants onto land (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, May 21, 2021, 01:36 (1281 days ago) @ David Turell

Plants started in the oceans, and joining with fungi got themselves terrestrial:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/05/210520145357.htm

"450 million years ago, the first plants left aquatic life. Researchers have now succeeded in demonstrating that this colonization of land by plants was made possible by a partnership between plants and fungi. Validating this 40-year-old hypothesis allows us to understand a stage that was crucial to the development of life on Earth.

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"Researchers from the CNRS and the Université de Toulouse III -- Paul Sabatier, in collaboration with INRAE, have succeeded in demonstrating that this colonisation of land by plants was made possible by a partnership between plants and fungi. Validating this 40-year-old hypothesis allows us to understand a stage at was crucial to the development of life on Earth.

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"Most plants live in symbiosis with fungi, whereby the two organisms exchange resources in a mutually beneficial way. Previous studies have shown the existence of genes that are essential for the proper functioning of this symbiosis, particularly in vascular plants. Here, scientists focused on a bryophyte resembling a succulent plant (see image), for which such genes had not yet been studied: Marchantia paleacea.

"By studying M. paleacea, they were able to demonstrate a lipid transfer between the plant and the fungus similar to that observed in vascular plants. By adapting the use of CRISPR, a molecular tool that allows DNA to be cleaved precisely, they were then able to modify a gene predicted as "symbiotic." As in vascular plants, the interruption of lipid exchange between the plant and the fungus leads to symbiosis failure in the bryophyte.

"The common ancestor of these two groups of plants, which colonised dry land, must therefore have exchanged lipids with the fungus, as do the plants of today. Thus, 450 million years later, one of the secrets of life's first steps on land has finally been elucidated."

Comment: How did plants latch onto fungi? Luck or design? Looks designed tov me.