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SUMMARY:Not just a pretty flower- an ancestral function for LEAFY in shoot
  development of non-seed vascular plants - Andrew Plackett\, Hibberd Lab
DTSTART:20171109T130000Z
DTEND:20171109T133000Z
UID:TALK82641@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Pallavi Singh
DESCRIPTION:At the genetic level\, the evolutionary history of land plants
  (embryophytes) is frequently the story of redeployment of existing genes 
 for new purposes.  A good example of this is the LEAFY transcription facto
 r (LFY)\, best known from the flowering plant (angiosperm) clade as a mast
 er regulator of flowering and floral development.  However\, angiosperms a
 re only the most recent land plant group to evolve\, and LFY predates the 
 evolution of flowering\, with homologues present in all land plant clades 
 and in algal relatives.  Our understanding of LFY function outside the flo
 wering plants has remained extremely limited due a scarcity of tractable n
 on-angiosperm model species.  Most data has been obtained from studies in 
 the model moss\, Physcomitrella patens.  As a representative of the most b
 asal lineages of non-vascular land plants (the bryophytes)\, we thus have 
 information regarding the developmental functions of LFY at the two extrem
 e ends of the land plant phylogeny\, but not in intermediate lineages (i.e
 . within the vascular plants).  With the enormous evolutionary divergence 
 that this comparison encompasses (approximately 500 million years)\, our a
 bility to infer the intervening evolutionary changes in LFY function from 
 these two extremes has been limited.\n\nRecent technical advances have now
  made functional genetic analysis possible in a model species from one of 
 these intermediate lineages- a non-seed vascular plant\, the fern Ceratopt
 eris richardii.  Expression and functional analysis of endogenous LFY homo
 logues in C. richardii suggest that in ancestral vascular plants LFY funct
 ioned outside of the reproductive phase to promote development of apical m
 eristems\, in both the sporophyte and gametophyte phases of the land plant
  life-cycle.  This result clarifies our understanding of LFY functions pre
 viously reported in P. patens\, and of the evolutionary changes in shoot g
 enetic networks that led to the emergence of specialised reproductive apic
 es within the seed-bearing plants (angiosperms and gymnosperms).\n
LOCATION:Department of Plant Sciences\, Large Lecture Theatre
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