When plants evolved from aquatic algae to being able to survive on land nearly half a billion years ago, the foundation for life on land was established.
When plants evolved from aquatic algae to being able to survive on land nearly half a billion years ago, the foundation for life on land was established. One of the challenges that made this dramatic transition particularly difficult were fungi:
"It is estimated that 100 million years prior, fungi crept across Earth’s surface in search of nourishment and most likely found it in dead algae washed up from the sea. So, if you, as a new plant, were going to establish yourself on land, and the first thing you encountered is a fungus that would eat you, you needed some sort of defense mechanism," says Mads Eggert Nielsen, a biologist at the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences.
According to Mads Eggert Nielsen and his research colleagues from the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences and the University of Paris-Saclay, the essence of this defense mechanism can be narrowed down to two genes, PEN1 and SYP122. Together, they help form a kind of plug in plants that blocks the invasion of fungi and fungus-like organisms.
Read more at: University of Copenhagen
Experiments on the model plant thale cress (Arabidopsis). (Photo Credit: Mads Eggert Nielsen)
