Evolutionary shifts in plant adaptations mediated by phytohormones.
Arabia A, Munné-Bosch S
Plant Signaling
Every tomato that sets fruit when the nights turn cool, every willow that roots from a cutting in a jar of water, every tulip that knows when to push up through frozen soil — all of that is phytohormones at work, a signaling language half a billion years in the making.
When ancient water-dwelling plants first crept onto land, they faced problems they'd never encountered before — drying out, harsh sunlight, gravity, and changing seasons. To survive, they gradually developed a set of chemical signals that act like an internal messaging system, telling different parts of the plant what to do and when. This review looks at how those ten major chemical messengers evolved over hundreds of millions of years and why they were so critical to plants eventually taking over the land.
Key Findings
Ten classical plant hormone systems — including auxin, gibberellins, and abscisic acid — each have distinct evolutionary origins that can be traced from algal ancestors through to flowering plants.
The sequential emergence and integration of these hormone networks, rather than any single innovation, drove increasing physiological complexity and the successful colonization of diverse terrestrial habitats.
Phytohormones functioned as coordinators of stress responses, growth, and development, giving land plants competitive advantages under fluctuating environmental conditions across evolutionary time.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Plants evolved a suite of chemical messengers called phytohormones as they moved from water onto land hundreds of millions of years ago. This review traces how ten major hormone systems emerged and diversified to help plants sense stress, coordinate growth, and thrive in unpredictable terrestrial environments.
Abstract Preview
The transition of plants from aquatic to terrestrial environments imposed unprecedented ecological and physiological challenges, necessitating the evolution of sophisticated perception and response...
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