It is thought that the hypothetical common ancestor was unicellular, and that siphonous body plans were not intermediate states in the development of multicellularity. In addition, multicellular bodies composed of multinucleate cells are seen in the Cladophorales. 11 Ulvophyceans are useful to understand evolutionary processes underlying cellularity and the diverse structural plans of green plants, because they display a variety of architectures, as well as having unicellular, multicellular and siphonous species. Inter- and intra-class relationships of ulvophytes, including six major orders (Bryopsidales, Cladophorales, Dasycladales, Trentepohliales, Ulotrichales and Ulvales), remain controversial, 8–10 although all members of this class are likely included in the monophyletic UTC (classes Ulvophyceae, Trebouxiophyceae and Chlorophyceae) clade. 5 Although multinucleate cells are also present in some clades of the Viridiplantae, including even land plants, homologies of molecular mechanisms associated with their development are little known. 4 Cultivation and invasiveness depend upon asexual (vegetative) reproduction of macroscopic cells. 3 A recent report on microbial communities of marine sediments suggests that the relationship between Caulerpa and the microbial community is an important determinant of invasiveness. Some Caulerpa species become invasive, causing environmental disturbances in coastal waters worldwide. The alga consists of many grape-like vesicles connected by stolons, and the entire alga comprises one cell with many nuclei. The siphonous alga, Caulerpa lentillifera. Based on the present results, we propose cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in the structural differentiation in the siphonous alga. These results not only imply functional convergence of duplicated genes among green plants, but also provide insight into evolutionary roots of green plants. Expanded transport regulators, which show spatially different expression, suggest that the structural patterning strategy of a multinucleate cell depends on diversification of nuclear pore proteins. Plant hormone signalling components were also expanded in a lineage-specific manner. Compared with other green algae, the TALE superclass of homeobox genes, which expanded in land plants, shows a series of lineage-specific duplications in this siphonous macroalga. lentillifera, occurred before the split of the Chlorophyceae and Trebouxiophyceae. Molecular phylogeny using 107 nuclear genes indicates that the diversification of the class Ulvophyceae, including C. To understand macroalgal developmental evolution, we assembled the ∼26 Mb genome of a siphonous green alga, Caulerpa lentillifera, with high contiguity, containing 9,311 protein-coding genes. Genome evolution and development of unicellular, multinucleate macroalgae (siphonous algae) are poorly known, although various multicellular organisms have been studied extensively.

Plants zombies 2 4.7.1