Conserved chromatinstructural proteins – a sourceof variation enabling plantspecific adaptations?

摘要

In his 2002 paper 'Plants compared to animals: the broadestcomparative study of development' (Meyerowitz, 2002;pp. 1482–1485), Elliot Meyerowitz concluded that asregards the molecular basis of pattern formation and cell–cell signaling, the two fundamental systems underlyingdevelopment, there is little homology between plants andanimals. Similar processes in the two lineages are usuallycontrolled by nonhomologous genes. For example, the master regulatory genes responsible for establishing segmentalidentity during embryonic development of animals, theHox homeobox genes, have no evolutionary relationship tomaster regulators acting in plant development patterning,the MADS box genes. Similarly, the receptor tyrosine kinases, like Sevenless or Gurken, or the Ras proteins, that arecritical components of cell signaling in animals, have nohomologous counterparts in plant signaling pathways. Thisstrongly suggests independent evolution of the molecularsystems responsible for the assembly of phenotypic forms inplants and animals.