Evidence for Early Evolution of Sulfated Peptide Signaling in Plant Development.
Tulio DV, Shigenaga AM, Wu SZ, Ronald PC, Bezanilla M
Plant Signaling
The moss colonizing a shaded garden wall and every crop in a farmer's field share the same ancient molecular growth signal, one so well-preserved over 500 million years that swapping signals between species works perfectly, opening a window into how plants might be nudged to grow more robustly.
Plants send tiny protein messages between cells to tell them when and how to grow. Scientists found that a key piece of this system, a small modified protein called PSY, was already working in mosses long before plants developed roots, leaves, or flowers. They confirmed it by swapping the moss version of this protein into cress plants and the cress version into moss: both worked, meaning this growth language has barely changed in half a billion years.
Key Findings
Moss plants (Physcomitrium patens) lacking the TPST enzyme were smaller, formed fewer filaments, and completely failed to develop leafy shoot structures called gametophores, proving TPST is essential even in non-vascular plants.
Histidine 124 was identified as the critical catalytic residue in TPST; mutating it abolished enzyme function.
PSY1 peptide from either Arabidopsis or P. patens fully rescued all developmental defects in TPST-null moss, and moss PSY1 promotes root elongation in both Arabidopsis and rice, demonstrating functional conservation across an estimated 500 million years of plant evolution.
chevron_right Technical Summary
A chemical signaling system that plants use to coordinate cell growth was already present in mosses, ancient plants that lack roots or leaves. This shows the system predates the evolution of vascular plants by hundreds of millions of years, and the signal peptide is so conserved that a moss version rescues broken Arabidopsis plants and vice versa.
Abstract Preview
In plants, the cell wall fixes the position of each cell; therefore, during development, plants rely on cellular proliferation and expansion for tissue patterning and organ formation. How plant cel...
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Physcomitrella patens is a synonym of Physcomitrium patens, the spreading earthmoss. It is a moss, a bryophyte used as a model organism for studies on plant evolution, development, and physiology.