When I came back from the Chinese New Year, the green plants on the entire unit workstation had withered by 99%. The colleague watered in vain, hoping to bring her dead branch back to life. But the plant has been dehydrated for too long, and it has caused irreparable damage.
Come, let's imagine that it is not your pot of houseplants that was abandoned during the Chinese New Year that suffers, but a field of wheat.
As the global climate changes, droughts are becoming more common.
But what if plants can withstand harsh, dry environmental conditions? If they can dry up but still not die, they will come back to life when the water is plentiful again, how does it sound?
The concept – "drying without dying" – or in jargon, desiccation tolerance, is an adaptation that allows plants to colonize on land and is still utilized by certain species throughout the plant kingdom.
You see, the little one I kept in my office was also dry and yellow. Spray a little water on this little dry moss, and in less than a minute, the bright little green plants come to life.
How do plants survive dryness?
The evolution of this phenomenon in mosses, provides a strip that dates back to 4A common thread of 500 million years of plant evolution.
There are about 114 species in the genus Erythrophyllum and they grow in a variety of climate types, including the Arctic, boreal regions, temperate regions, and deserts.
These special mosses play a vital ecological role in dryland biological crusts. The "living crust of the earth" is a complex biome that forms a crust on the surface of the soil and is used to maintain the stability and fertility of the soil underneath.
Similar to the way the human microbiome plays an important role in our own health.
Scientists have systematically studied all aspects of these mosses, from genomics and transcriptomics to phylogeny and physiology.
After sequencing and analysis in broken and crumpled ground, the gene expression changes of red moss dehydration and rehydration were well documented.
Closely related mosses within this genus use a similar pathway to coordinate the dehydration process, with MYB55 being a regulator.
Interestingly, this regulator is also present in flowering plants – responsible for the dormancy and resurrection of seeds: the seeds of flowering plants dry out as they mature, putting them into a dormant state, allowing them to survive until environmental conditions are optimal.
This illustrates a problem: drought resistance is a conserved evolutionary mechanism between different plant species, and certain key genes associated with it have been preserved throughout the evolutionary process and are constantly being taken out and reused.
You see, these desiccation tolerance genes did not disappear with the evolution of flowering plants, but were entrusted to specific plant tissues (seeds) at a specific life stage for a specific purpose.
These mosses have the tools to cope with harsh environmental conditions, and these tools are in 4It has been in some form or another over the course of 500 million years of evolution. With a better understanding of how the resurrection process works, it is possible that we can use these mechanisms to make crops, and even those bleak houseplants in the office, more resilient.
Netflix's classic "Love Death" (Season 1, Episode 7), and HBO Max's drama "Scavengers Reign" last year, all appeared in the dried corpse species resurrected by water.
Our imagination never goes beyond reality. From an evolutionary point of view, since all life is interconnected, it is entirely possible for animals like mosses to exist.
The author thanks for your interest (-
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