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MBE Advance Access originally published online on February 13, 2006
Molecular Biology and Evolution 2006 23(5):1011-1015; doi:10.1093/molbev/msj108
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Letter

A Land Plant–Specific Multigene Family in the Unicellular Mesostigma Argues for Its Close Relationship to Streptophyta

Aurora M. Nedelcu*,1, Tudor Borza{dagger},1 and Robert W. Lee{dagger}

* Department of Biology, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada; and
{dagger} Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

E-mail: anedelcu{at}unb.ca.

The search for the unicellular relative of Streptophyta (i.e., land plants and their closest green algal relatives, the charophytes) started many years ago and remained centered around the scaly green flagellate, Mesostigma viride. To date, despite numerous studies, the phylogenetic position of Mesostigma is still debated and the nature of the unicellular ancestor of Streptophyta remains unknown. As molecular phylogenetic studies have produced conflicting results, we constructed a M. viride expressed sequence tags library and searched for sequences that are shared between M. viride and the Streptophyta (to the exclusion of the other green algal lineages—the Chlorophyta). Here, we report a multigene family that is restricted to Streptophyta and M. viride. The phylogenetic distribution of this complex character and its potential involvement in the evolution of an important land plant adaptive trait (i.e., three-dimensional tissues) argue that Mesostigma is a close unicellular relative of Streptophyta.

Key Words: Mesostigma viride • land plant evolution • Streptophyta • histogenetic meristem • gene family


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