A Key Role for S-Nitrosylation in Immune Regulation and Development in the Liverwort Marchantia polymorpha.
Tabassum N, Goodrich J, Loake GJ
Plant Signaling
PubMedEvery tomato plant, rose bush, and oak tree in your garden inherited an ancient immune system that was already working in the earliest land plants — understanding how it evolved could lead to crops that fight off disease without pesticides.
Plants use a tiny gas molecule called nitric oxide to defend themselves against germs, similar to how our own immune systems use chemical signals. Researchers found that a gene controlling this process exists in one of the most ancient land plants alive today — a flat, moss-like plant called a liverwort — and when they broke that gene, the plant couldn't fight infections and grew abnormally. This tells us that plants have been using this defense trick for hundreds of millions of years, long before flowers or vegetables ever appeared on Earth.
Key Findings
The MpGSNOR1 gene, which regulates nitric oxide signaling, exists as a single copy in Marchantia polymorpha and is essential for normal immune function in this ancient plant lineage
CRISPR/Cas9 knockout of MpGSNOR1 caused pronounced morphological (structural) defects in the liverwort, revealing that nitric oxide balance is critical for development, not just immunity
The findings indicate that the GSNOR-based nitric oxide immune toolkit was present in the common ancestor of all land plants, meaning this defense system predates the evolution of flowering plants by hundreds of millions of years
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists discovered that a molecule called nitric oxide — and the chemical process it triggers — has been controlling plant immunity and body structure since before flowering plants ever evolved, using a 470-million-year-old liverwort as their time machine.
Abstract Preview
Nitric oxide (NO) is an important signaling molecule in flowering plant immunity. It rapidly accumulates in response to pathogen perception. In addition to it's direct response to microbes, NO cont...
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Liverworts are a group of non-vascular land plants forming the division Marchantiophyta. They may also be referred to as hepatics. Like mosses and hornworts, they have a gametophyte-dominant life cycle, in which cells of the plant carry only a single set of genetic information. The division name ...