A phylogenomically informed five-order system for the closest relatives of land plants
Sebastian Hess, Shelby K. Williams, Anna Busch, Iker Irisarri, Charles F. Delwiche, Sophie de Vries, Tatyana Darienko, Andrew J. Roger, John M. Archibald, Henrik Buschmann, Klaus von Schwartzenberg, Jan de Vries
Abstract
but never subjected to molecular analyses. We generated transcriptomic data of M. calospora strain MZCH580 and conducted comprehensive phylogenomic analyses (326 nuclear loci) for 46 taxonomically diverse zygnematophytes. Strain MZCH580 falls in a deep-branching zygnematophycean clade together with some unicellular species and thus represents a formerly unknown zygnematophycean lineage with filamentous growth. Our well-supported phylogenomic tree lets us propose a new five-order system for the Zygnematophyceae and provides evidence for at least five independent origins of true filamentous growth in the closest algal relatives of land plants. This phylogeny provides a robust and comprehensive framework for performing comparative analyses and inferring the evolution of cellular traits and body plans in the closest relatives of land plants.