The Charophycean green algae as model systems to study plant cell walls and other evolutionary adaptations that gave rise to land plants

Abstract

The Charophycean green algae (CGA) occupy a key phylogenetic position as the evolutionary grade that includes the sister group of the land plants (embryophytes), and so provide potentially valuable experimental systems to study the development and evolution of traits that were necessary for terrestrial colonization. The nature and molecular bases of such traits are still being determined, but one critical adaptation is thought to have been the evolution of a complex cell wall. Very little is known about the identity, origins and diversity of the biosynthetic machinery producing the major suites of structural polymers (i. e., cell wall polysaccharides and associated molecules) that must have been in place for land colonization. However, it has been suggested that the success of the earliest land plants was partly based on the frequency of gene duplication, and possibly whole genome duplications, during times of radical habitat changes. Orders of the CGA span early diverging taxa retaining more ancestral characters, through complex multicellular organisms with morphological characteristics resembling those of land plants. Examination of gene diversity and evolution within the CGA could help reveal when and how the molecular pathways required for synthesis of key structural polymers in land plants arose.