Ana Julia Sagasti
(Institute of Molecular Plant Sciences, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK. CONICET and Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Instituto de Recursos Minerales (UNLP-CICBA), La Plata, Argentina.)
Stomata are openings in the epidermis of plants, bounded by turgor-driven guard cells that open and close to control water loss, gas exchange, and regulate internal temperature. The fossil record preserves evidence that stomata are ancient and highly conserved features that develop on above-ground plant organs of the majority of plant groups and were likely present in the common ancestor of all extant plants. Furthermore, phylogenomic and comparative functional and developmental studies suggest that early land plants possessed a large complement of the stomatal genetic toolkit and were functionally similar to living groups with the capacity to respond to changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Here, we leverage a new technique to extract larger fragments of exceptionally preserved fossils from the Rhynie chert (~407ma, Scotland, UK) fossil site, combined with cell segmentation to quantify stomata and epidermal patterning in leafless species using Aglaophyton majus and Rhynia gwynne-vaughanii as case studies. Our results show that stomata are distributed around the full cylindrical surface of axes and aligned with the growth direction. Moreover, stomatal density is highly variable within species, significatively lower than previous estimates and much lower than in modern leaves, and lacks a correlation with axis diameter. Our statistical analysis of cell size and shape confirms the presence of subsidiary cell-like cells in both species. This combined evidence suggests that a robust and complex epidermal patterning mechanism was present in A. majus and R. gwynee-vaughanii.
Ana Julia Sagasti
(Institute of Molecular Plant Sciences, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK. CONICET and Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Instituto de Recursos Minerales (UNLP-CICBA), La Plata, Argentina.)
Jeremy Wyman
(Institute of Molecular Plant Sciences, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK. School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.)
Katie Ronay
(School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.)
Matthew Humpage
(Institute of Molecular Plant Sciences, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK. Northern Rogue Studios, Inverness, UK.)
Michael Raissig
(Institute of Plant Sciences, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.)
Philip C.J. Donoghue
(Bristol Palaeobiology Group, School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.)
Rieko Fujinami
(Department of Botany, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan)
Tom Beeckman
(Ghent University, Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Ghent, Belgium. VIB Center for Plant Systems Biology, Ghent, Belgium)
C. Jill Harrison
(School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.)
James W. Clark
(Milner Centre for Evolution, Department of Life Sciences, University of Bath, Bath, UK.)
Alistair M. Hetherington
(School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK. Department of Natural Sciences, National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh, UK.)
Alexander J. Hetherington
(Institute of Molecular Plant Sciences, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh; Department of Natural Sciences, National Museums Scotland; Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK. Edinburgh, UK.)
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