Liverwort gametophyte
WHAT’S THAT? Plants lead dual lives. Sometimes their cells contain two copies of every gene (like you and I do), and sometimes their cells contain only one copy. This latter stage, called the gametophyte, is shown here in a liverwort, a low-growing plant on damp forest floors.
WHAT’S THE LATEST? When flowering plants evolved millions of years ago, it was practically a death sentence for ferns. How could lowly ferns compete with diverse flowers that blanketed the forest floor? But we still see ferns today, and research from Duke University suggests they survived thanks in part to liverwort-like plants called hornworts. Hornworts have a gene that helps them survive in low light, and they ferried this gene directly to fern gametophytes so they too could survive as flowers competed with ferns for light. This is the first evidence that gene transfer can have a huge evolutionary impact in plants, and it makes scientists wonder what else plants share with each other on a daily basis.
Image by Magdalena Turzańska/University of Wroclaw/Nikon Small World.
