Between 120 and 150 million years ago, flowering plants began to take over the world, leading to the amazing variety of flowers and foods we have today. To understand what the secret of their success is, you need to think small, looking into the DNA
Between 120 and 150 million years ago, flowering plants began to take over the world, leading to the amazing variety of flowers and foods we have today. To understand what the secret of their success is, you need to think small, looking into the DNA.
To say it is a new study conducted by biologist Kevin Simonin of San Francisco State University. According to the scientist, at a certain time in their history, flowering plants resized their genome in order to have smaller cells to "build" leaves with more delicate but at the same time complex structures. In terms of evolution, this probably made them more resilient than their non-flowered peers.
"Flowering plants are the most important group of plants on Earth, and now we finally know why they have been so successful" he said Kevin Simonin, one of the two authors of the study.
Angiosperms produce flowers and fruits that contain their seeds. Scientists think they have found the answer to the riddle that amazed even Charles Darwin: how flowers evolved and diversified and how they spread to become dominant on Earth.
Flowering plants, or angiosperms, make up about 90% of all living plant species, including most food crops. In ancient times, they outnumbered conifers and ferns but how they managed to do so until now was a mystery.
In fact, before the arrival of flowering plants, the plant world was ruled by ferns and the ancestors of modern pine trees. But at some point the former took over.
Putting together data from all the published literature, Simonin and his collaborator, Adam Roddy of Yale University, showed that flowering plants during their evolution underwent genome scaling, while the DNA of their more primitive relatives remained more or less equal.
A smaller genome coincides with the possibility of creating smaller cells. And from these smaller blocks, the team showed that flowering plants can build more complicated networks to keep their cells hydrated and with more pores in the leaves to absorb the carbon dioxide they need to produce food.
The researchers then compared the innovations with the plant family tree and found that flowering plants began to resize their genome just as they began to take over the world. Having a greater variety of cell blocks apparently gave them the leeway they needed to rise above the ferns and pines.
A fact that is not insignificant for human life since many of these plants are now our food and also feed many animals.
Simonin plans to study other groups of flowering plants that have not scaled their genome, probably because photosynthesis was more difficult in some environments. This would confirm his hypothesis.
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The research was published in the journal PLOS Biology.
Francesca Mancuso
