The Origin of Land Plants: A Phylogenomic Perspective

Land plants are a natural group, and Charophyte algae are the closest lineages of land plants and have six morphologically diverged groups. The conjugating green algae (Zygnematales) are now suggested to be the extant sister group to land plants, providing the novel understanding for character evolu...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bojian Zhong, Linhua Sun, David Penny
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SAGE Publishing 2015-01-01
Series:Evolutionary Bioinformatics
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.4137/EBO.S29089
Description
Summary:Land plants are a natural group, and Charophyte algae are the closest lineages of land plants and have six morphologically diverged groups. The conjugating green algae (Zygnematales) are now suggested to be the extant sister group to land plants, providing the novel understanding for character evolution and early multicellular innovations in land plants. We review recent molecular phylogenetic work on the origin of land plants and discuss some future directions in phylogenomic analyses.
ISSN:1176-9343