Abstract
The thalloid liverwort Marchantia polymorpha as a member of a basal land plant lineage has to cope with the challenge of terrestrial life. Obviously, the plant cell wall has been strongly involved in the outstanding evolutionary process of water-to-land-transition. AGPs are signaling glycoproteins of the cell wall, which seem to be ubiquitous in seed plants and might play a role in adaption to abiotic and biotic stress situations. Therefore, we investigated the cell wall composition of Marchantia polymorpha with special focus on structural characterization of arabinogalactan-proteins. The Marchantia AGP shows typical features known from seed plant AGPs like precipitation with β-glucosyl-Yariv’s reagent, a protein moiety with hydroxyproline and a carbohydrate part with 1,3,6-linked galactose and terminal arabinose residues. On the other hand, striking differences to AGPs of angiosperms are the occurrence of terminal 3-O-methyl-rhamnose and a highly branched galactan lacking appreciable amounts of 1,6-linked galactose. Binding of different AGP-antibodies (JIM13, KM1, LM2, LM6, LM14, LM26, and MAC207) to Marchantia AGP was investigated and confirmed structural differences between liverwort and angiosperm AGP, possibly due to deviating functions of these signaling molecules in the different taxonomic groups.
Highlights
Around 450 mya ago, land plants evolved from a freshwater alga of the charophyte lineage, and by the end of the Devonian (360 mya), the extant lineages of land plants were established and today dominate the terrestrial environment [1,2,3,4]
The Marchantia AGP shows typical features known from seed plant AGPs like precipitation with β-glucosyl-Yariv’s reagent, a protein moiety with hydroxyproline and a carbohydrate part with
It is accepted that bryophytes are basal within the land plants, the relationship of hornworts, liverworts, and mosses to the monophyletic vascular plant group is still under discussion [3] with up to seven alternative hypotheses [5,6]
Summary
Around 450 mya ago, land plants evolved from a freshwater alga of the charophyte lineage, and by the end of the Devonian (360 mya), the extant lineages of land plants (hornworts, liverworts, mosses, lycophytes, monilophytes, and spermatophytes) were established and today dominate the terrestrial environment [1,2,3,4]. The ancestors of extant bryophytes were among the earliest lineages of plants and studies on species of this lineage can offer insights into plant terrestrialization, one of the most foundational events in the history of life on earth. Discovery of fossils suggest that the first land plants possessed features of liverworts [7,8,9], which makes Marchantia polymorpha an interesting model organism relating to plant evolution [10]. Genome sequencing of this liverwort species revealed insight into the origin of some fundamental plant properties, e.g., with regard to plant hormone signaling pathways of auxin, jasmonic acid, abscisic acid, and salicylic
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