For Group 4 and 5

Lecture 1: Overview of
Green Plants

1. Plant History and Phylogeny

2. Life Cycle
a. definitions & processes
b. animals vs. plants
c. Genetics

Dr. Lakshmi
Expected Learning
Outcome
• Explain the relationship between the different
algae clades and plants.
• Explain why chlorophytes are considered
close relatives of land plants
• Explain why charophytes are considered the
closest relatives of land plants.
 All Organisms Share Fundamental Properties of Life

All organisms basic unit = CELL! WHY?

1. Cellular organization
2. Sensitivity
3. Growth
4. Development
5. Reproduction
6. Regulation
7. Homeostasis
8. Heredity

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 Evolution of life on earth
• Scientists have calculated that Earth is 4.54 billion years old.
• The earliest undisputed evidence of life on Earth dates from at
least 3.5 billion years ago.

• Life on Earth began in the water

Life forms in water:

• Most life forms evolved initially in marine habitats. By volume,
oceans provide about 90 percent of the living space on the
planet.
• Precambrian Life began in the ocean near the beginning of
this era.
• The oldest known fossils - the remains of different types of
bacteria - are in archean rocks about 3.5 billion years old.

Life forms occupy land:

• The first land plants appeared around 470 million years ago,
during the Cambrian period, Ordovician period, when life was
diversifying rapidly.
• They were non-vascular plants, like mosses and liverworts, that
didn't have deep roots.
Evolution of life
on earth

Life forms occupy land

Life forms in
water
 What do all cells (therefore organisms)
have?
Where the
information is stored
in the cell?

DNA
You have to go much further back in the
evolutionary story to find an ancestor
common to both plants and animals.
Humans share more than 50 percent of
their genetic information with plants and
animals in general. They share about 80
percent with cows, 61 percent with bugs
such as fruit flies. 7
 Origin of Plants
The origin of land plants has long been
recognized as a major evolutionary event
➢ What is the ancestral origin of
plants?
➢ Green algae and land plants
shared a common ancestor , a
little over one billion years
(1bya) called green plants
(photosynthetic).
➢ Plant kingdom includes green
algae but not fungi (related to
metazoan animal, but are
essential to colonize on land by
plants enhancing plant nutrient
capture from soil)
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 WHY DID PLANTS DECIDE TO GET OUT OF THE WATER
• Life on Earth began in the water.
• Plants have not always been around on land. For a long
time, life was confined to water.
• The first plants evolved from green algae that looked
somewhat like the Chara pictured . Chara
• The first photosynthetic organisms were bacteria that lived in
the water.
• So, where did plants come from?
• Evidence shows that plants evolved from freshwater
green algae, a protist .
The ancestor of plants is green algae.
Advantage of living in land:
• A. Abundant carbon di oxide.
• B. Enough solar radiation

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 Origin of Plants
1. Some salt water algae evolved successfully to live in fresh Green algae fall in 2 groups
water
2. Who is this successful single is a mystery?

3. Close relatives are members of charophytes that live in fresh

water today
Chlorophytes that
never came to land

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Major Environmental Challenges for Land
Plants

If you were a green algae happily floating

in water and you decide to move out to
land, what would you worry about?

1. Lack of water
and methods to
prevent drying
out
2. Transport of
sperm and ovum
in Reproduction
3. Harmful effect of
UV radiation 9
 Origin of Plants
Green algae fall in 2 groups

Charophytes that live in fresh water today Chlorophytes that

They are Sister clade to all land plants living never came to land
today

• Had multicellular haploid diploid stages

• Developed cuticle when exposed to air
• Carried out diffusion through stomata

Tracheophytes or vascular plants

Bryophytes or Non vascular plants
• Could not grow tall as no system to
transport water.
• First land plants.
• Require rain water for sexual reproduction.
Only found in moist places, deep forest
• had special vascular tissue like xylem, phloem.
• To overcome UV radiation, they carried 2 copies of every gene in
their body, so that deleterious mutations could be masked.
• Shifted to a dominant diploid generation
are classified into Seedless plants (spore bearing) or Seed bearing
plants

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Molecular phylogenetic has identified the closest living
relatives of land plants
Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Green plants
Streptophyta
Land plants

Bryophytes Tracheophytes
Euphyllophytes
Green algae Green algae Seed plants

Red Algae Chlorophytes Charophytes Liverworts Mosses Hornworts Lycophytes Ferns + Allies Gymnosperms Angiosperms

Phylogenetic tree: A pattern of descent generated

by analysis of similarities and differences among
Ancestral alga
organisms

Clade: A taxonomic group composed of an

ancestor and all its descendants
EXTRA READING:
Phylogenetic tree:

• A pattern of descent generated by analysis of similarities and

differences among organisms

• Diagram explaining evolutionary relationships among

organisms.

• phylogenetic trees are based on the genetic

relationships between the organisms.

• The pattern of branching in a phylogenetic tree reflects how

species or other groups evolved from a series of common
ancestors.

• Clade: A taxonomic group composed of an ancestor and all its

descendants

• A clade is a grouping that includes a common ancestor and all

the descendants (living and extinct) of that ancestor.

• Using a phylogeny, it is easy to tell if a group of lineages forms

a clade.

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Defining Plants
Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Green plants
Streptophyta
Land plants

Bryophytes Tracheophytes
Euphyllophytes
Green algae Green algae Seed plants

Red Algae Chlorophytes Charophytes Liverworts Mosses Hornworts Lycophytes Ferns + Allies Gymnosperms Angiosperms

➢ All green algae and the land plants shared a

Ancestral alga
common ancestor a little over 1 BYA
➢ A single species of freshwater green algae
gave rise to the entire terrestrial plant
lineage

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What do phylogenetic trees tell us?
Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Green plants
Streptophyta
Land plants

Bryophytes Tracheophytes
Euphyllophytes
Green algae Green algae Seed plants

Red Algae Chlorophytes Charophytes Liverworts Mosses Hornworts Lycophytes Ferns + Allies Gymnosperms Angiosperms

Ancestral alga

The charophytes are the extant (still in existence; surviving.) group of green algae
that are most closely related to modern land plants.
The charophytes are now known to be the most closely related group of organisms
to the Plantae. 8
Adaptations to terrestrial (land) life
–Problem #1: desiccation
• Solution: Waxy cuticle and stomata for gas
diffusion
• Desiccation is a much more common problem in terrestrial
environments.

–Problem #2: Moving water through plant body

• Solution: Vascular system
– Tracheophytes have tracheids
– Xylem and phloem to conduct water and food

–Problem #3: UV radiation caused mutations

• Solution: Shift to a dominant diploid generation
• All land plants have Haplodiplontic life cycle
• Multicellular haploid and diploid life stages
• Humans are diplontic
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 Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Green plants
Streptophyta
Land plants

Bryophytes Tracheophytes
Euphyllophytes
Green algae Green algae Seed plants

Red Algae Chlorophytes Charophytes Liverworts Mosses Hornworts Lycophytes Ferns + Allies Gymnosperms Angiosperms

Flowers
Fruits
Seeds
Euphylls
Stems, roots, leaves
Dominant sporophyte
Vascular tissue
Stomata
haplodiplontic
Cuticle

Chlorophyll a and b

Ancestral alga

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