abstract: Life on Earth as we know it would not be possible without the evolution
  of plants, and without the transition of plants to live on land. Land plants (also
  known as embryophytes) are a monophyletic lineage embedded within the green algae.
  Green algae as a whole are among the oldest eukaryotic lineages documented in the
  fossil record, and are well over a billion years old, while land plants are about
  450-500 million years old. Much of green algal diversification took place before
  the origin of land plants, and the land plants are unambiguously members of a strictly
  freshwater lineage, the charophyte green algae. Contrary to single-gene and morphological
  analyses, genome-scale phylogenetic analyses indicate the sister taxon of land plants
  to be the Zygnematophyceae, a group of mostly unbranched filamentous or single-celled
  organisms. Indeed, several charophyte green algae have historically been used as
  model systems for certain problems, but often without a recognition of the specific
  phylogenetic relationships among land plants and (other) charophyte green algae.
  Insight into the phylogenetic and genomic properties of charophyte green algae opens
  up new opportunities to study key properties of land plants in closely related model.
  This review will outline the transition from single-celled algae to modern-day land
  plants, and will highlight the bright promise studying the charophyte green algae
  holds for better understanding plant evolution.
authors:
- Delwiche, Charles Francis
- Cooper, Endymion Dante
doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.08.029
issn: 0960-9822,1879-0445
issue: '19'
journal: Curr. Biol.
lastmod: '2015-10-05'
pages: R899-910
path: /library/delwiche-2015.html
pmid: '26439353'
published: '2015-10-05'
reference: Delwiche 2015
title: The Evolutionary Origin of a Terrestrial Flora
type: article
volume: '25'
year: 2015