Table 1

An evolutionary view - vegetative desiccation tolerance in plants

Order/
Tolerance characteristics
Developmental complexity
Mechanisms of tolerance

Liverworts/
Rapid desiccation tolerated;
Anatomically primitive
Cell integrity maintained during drying
hornworts/
Some protection mechanisms
No vasculature
Rehydration leads to damage
mosses
focus on repair mechanisms

Rapid recovery

photosynthetic-apparatus maintained

Presence of non-reducing sugars, dehydrins and



     rehydrins appear



Pre-stress existence of mRNA in RNPs
Selaginellales,
Slower desiccation required;
Vascular tissues develop

Isoetales,
photosynthetic-apparatus maintained

Scarcity of data
Lycopodiales

Epidermis appears

Equisetum/
Slow desiccation required
Increasing anatomical and
Scarcity of data
Ferns

     developmental complexity



Epidermis appears

Gymnosperms
No vegetative desiccation
Beginning seed desiccation
Scarcity of data

     tolerance
     tolerance

Angiosperms
(Re)-discovery of vegetative
Established seed desiccation
Transcripts for proteins typical for drying

     desiccation tolerance
     tolerance
     seeds induced in vegetative tissues
Monocots
Slow desiccation required

Transcripts of unknown function homologous
     Poaceae
Focus on protection of

     to constitutively expressed moss genes
     Liliaceae
     existing structures

     are induced
Dicots
Photosynthetic-apparatus either maintained

LEA proteins, sugars and oligosaccharides,
     Hamamelidaceae
     or reduced during desiccation

Dehydrins and rehydrins in complex gene families
     Labiatae


Tolerance inducible, ABA influence, sugars may be
     Gesneriaceae


     present or inducible
     Scrophulariaceae


Transcription factors, vesicular traffic

Included are major systematic orders of plants in increasing organizational complexity and following plant appearance during evolution. Monocots - plants with a single cotyledon (for example, grasses [Poaceae]; Sporobolus stapfianus is a desiccation tolerant species in the Poaceae family); dicots - two cotyledons (for example, Arabidopsis thaliana; Craterostigma plantagineum is in this class). Tortula ruralis is, among the mosses, the best studied desiccation tolerant species. ABA, abscisic acid; LEA, late embryogenesis abundant.

Bohnert Genome Biology 2000 1:reviews1010.1   doi:10.1186/gb-2000-1-2-reviews1010