12/4/2019 Hornworts: Structures Evolved Several Times - AcademiaNet

AcademiaNet is in the process of being restructured.

In the meanwhile, the database can still be used to nd excellent women in science!
However, pro les and content sites will not be maintained and might not be up-to-date.

RESEARCH

Hornworts: Structures Evolved Several Times

DNA sequencing shows evolutionary history of mosses

10. 12. 2012 | Hornworts are among the oldest land plants and possess characteristic cellular
structures that have been regarded as a legacy from algae. Instead, these structures apparently
evolved and were lost several times.

Of the three moss lineages, hornworts are the one most closely related to vascular plants. Their plastids - the
intracellular organelles in which the light reactions of photosynthesis take place - contain characteristic structures
called pyrenoids, which mainly consist of the enzyme Rubisco. Rubisco plays a key role in photosynthesis, it is required
for the conversion of CO2 into sugars. Given the enzyme's crucial function, botanists have assumed that pyrenoids
provide some evolutionary advantage, perhaps by enabling carbon xation when ambient carbon dioxide
concentrations are low.

"Apart from their presence in hornworts, pyrenoids are found only in some algae and are absent from all other land
plants. For this reason, they have been taken to represent an evolutionary holdover from the time when the rst
terrestrial plants appeared," says Professor Susanne Renner, a biologist at the LMU University and director of the
Botanic Garden in Munich. Together with Juan Carlos Villarreal, a postdoctoral fellow from Panama, she has taken a
closer look at the diversi cation of the hornworts and the evolutionary history of the pyrenoids.

We use cookies to personalise content

The analysis revealed that pyrenoids have actually arisen independently six times in di erent lineages of hornworts
and ads, to provide social media features
and have
and also been lost
to analyse ourattraffic.
least as
Weoften.
also In other words, hornwort pyrenoids do not represent an ancient trait that
share
was inherited from
information algae-like
about your ancestors
use of ourand
site retained
with since. ❯ Settings ✓ Ok
our social media, advertising and
analytics
The new study, partners.For details,
which is based please DNA
on extensive see sequence comparisons, also nds no support for the hypothesis that
our privacy
pyrenoids policy.
function as an adaptive advantage when the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is low. "We dated the

https://www.academia-net.org/news/hornworts-structures-evolved-several-times/1170499 1/3
12/4/2019 Hornworts: Structures Evolved Several Times - AcademiaNet

branching points in the hornwort family tree using the molecular-clock technique and compared the ages of groups
with or without pyrenoids with a plot depicting the changes in levels of CO2 over the past 100 million years", Renner
explains. She continues, "there was no correlation between the presence or absence of pyrenoids and the rise and fall
in atmospheric CO2 concentration."

On the basis of these results, both researchers conclude that pyrenoids serve some other function. Moreover, Renner
suspects that they might even impose an evolutionary cost on the mosses that possess them: "Otherwise it is hard to
explain why they should have been lost so often."
   (© Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich/AcademiaNet)

      
Dr. Monika Gödde

More information

Prof. Dr. Susanne S. Renner

Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich

Natural sciences, mathematics and statistics

Biological and related sciences
Evolutionary biology, organism biology

TO THE PROFILE

Original article

Hornwort pyrenoids, a carbon-concentrating mechanism, evolved and were lost at least ve times
during the last 100 million years Juan Carlos Villarreal and Susanne S. Renner PNAS, 30. Oktober 2012
We use cookies to personalise content
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1213498109
and ads, to provide social media features
and to analyse our traffic. We also share
information about your use of our site with ❯ Settings ✓ Ok
our social media, advertising and
analytics partners.For details, please see
our privacy policy.

https://www.academia-net.org/news/hornworts-structures-evolved-several-times/1170499 2/3
12/4/2019 Hornworts: Structures Evolved Several Times - AcademiaNet

Related links

Prof. Susanne Renner at LMU University

Source

We use cookies to personalise content

and ads, to provide social media features
and to analyse our traffic. We also share
information about your use of our site with ❯ Settings ✓ Ok
our social media, advertising and
analytics partners.For details, please see
our privacy policy.

https://www.academia-net.org/news/hornworts-structures-evolved-several-times/1170499 3/3