A global science team used 1.8 billion letters of genetic code to reveal a tree of life for plants

The most recent knowledge of the flowering plant tree of life is presented in a new paper by a global team of 279 scientists headed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, which was published today (April 24) in the journal Nature.

Utilizing 11.8 billion genetic code letters from over 9,500 species, which comprise nearly 8,000 recognized genera of flowering plants (approx. 60%), this remarkable accomplishment illuminates new facets of the evolutionary path taken by flowering plants and their ascent to ecological dominance on our planet.

The data, according to the study’s authors, will support future efforts to classify plants more precisely, find new therapeutic compounds, identify new species, and preserve plants in the face of biodiversity loss and climate change.

Led by Kew and involving 138 organizations worldwide, the significant milestone for plant science was founded on 15 times more data than any comparable studies of the flowering plant tree of life. Approximately 800 of the species whose DNA was sequenced for this study were previously unresolved.

Building a tree of life for all 330,000 known species of flowering plants—a massive undertaking by Kew’s Tree of Life Initiative—is made possible by the sheer amount of data unlocked by this research, which would take a single computer 18 years to process.

Dr. “It was a tremendous challenge to analyze this unprecedented amount of data to decode the information hidden in millions of DNA sequences,” says Alexandre Zuntini, Research Fellow at RBG Kew. Yet it also presented a singular chance to reconsider and broaden our understanding of the plant tree of life, creating a new avenue for delving into the intricacy of plant evolution. “.

opening up ancient herbarium specimens for innovative study.

The tree of life, which blossoms, allows us to comprehend the relationships between various species, much like our own family tree. By comparing DNA sequences from various species, one can uncover the tree of life by identifying changes (mutations) that accumulate over time, similar to a molecular fossil record.

Together with the rapid advancements in DNA sequencing technology, our understanding of the tree of life is also rapidly improving. Hundreds of genes and hundreds of thousands of letters of genetic code were magnetically captured from each sample for this study using new genomic techniques, orders of magnitude more than with previous approaches.

The ability to sequence a broad variety of plant material—both new and old—even when the DNA is severely damaged—is a significant benefit of the team’s methodology. Research on genetics can now be done on the enormous collections of dried plant material, which include almost 400 million scientific specimens of plants, found in herbarium collections around the globe.

By using these specimens, the team was able to successfully sequence a specimen of sandwort (Arenaria globiflora) that had been collected in Nepal almost 200 years ago. Despite the specimen’s poor DNA quality, they were still able to place it in the tree of life.

Hesperelaea palmeri, the Guadalupe Island olive, has not been observed alive since 1875. The team even examined extinct plants. According to the IUCN Red List, 511 of the sequenced species are actually already at risk of extinction, including three already extinct species like Hesperelaea.

The wealth of information hidden away in historic herbarium specimens—some of which date back to the early 19th century—has, in many respects, made it possible for us to work in tandem with the botanists of the past, according to Professor William Baker, Senior Research Leader—Tree of Life.

The significance of these specimens in genomic research today could not have been predicted by our esteemed predecessors, Charles Darwin or Joseph Hooker. During their lives, DNA was not even discovered!

Our research demonstrates the critical role that these amazing botanical museums play in pioneering new discoveries about life on Earth. Who knows what other unexplored scientific possibilities they hold?”.

More than 3,400 of the 9,506 species that have been sequenced have material from 163 herbaria spread over 48 countries. Extra content from global plant collections (e.g. g. living collections, DNA banks, and seeds) have all been essential in bridging important knowledge gaps and illuminating the evolution of flowering plants. The usefulness of the open science approach to future genomic research is demonstrated by the team’s utilization of publicly available data for over 1,900 species.

shedding light on the terrible mystery of Darwin.

Only flowering plants make up approximately 90% of all known land plants, and they can be found almost anywhere on Earth, from the hottest tropical regions to the rocky outcrops of the Antarctic Peninsula. Even Charles Darwin has been perplexed by our understanding of how these plants came to dominate the landscape so soon after they originated.

After emerging more than 140 million years ago, flowering plants quickly surpassed other vascular plants, even their nearest surviving relatives, the gymnosperms (non-flowering plants with bare seeds, like ginkgo, cycads, and conifers).

Such diversity in the fossil record appeared seemingly out of nowhere, confounding Darwin. The rapid development, as far as we can determine, of all higher plants within recent geological times is an abhorrent mystery, he wrote in a letter to his close confidant and RBG Kew director, Joseph Dalton Hooker, in 1879. ****.

The authors used 200 fossils to scale their tree of life to time, showing the evolution of flowering plants over geological time. They discovered that, in fact, the diversity of early flowering plants did explode, giving rise to over 80 percent of the major lineages that persist to this day not long after their origin.

But after that, the trend slowed down to a more steady pace for the following 100 million years, until another diversification boom occurred roughly 40 million years ago, which coincided with a worldwide drop in temperature. These fresh perspectives would have captivated Darwin and will undoubtedly support scientists working to solve the puzzle of how and why species diversify today.

A truly international partnership.

Without Kew’s scientists working with numerous partners around the world, it would not have been possible to assemble such an extensive tree of life. The research involved 279 authors in total, from 138 organizations across 27 countries, representing a wide range of nationalities. They include the Genomics for Australian Plants (GAP) consortium, which collaborated closely with Kew to increase the number of Australian plant species in the tree and was among the first to adopt the team’s techniques.

Several valuable plant samples from all over the world that were unavailable without the assistance of international collaborators were also shared, along with their special botanical knowledge. This fantastic collaboration has greatly contributed to the tree’s comprehensiveness.

Dr. “We are proud to be a major partner and collaborator in RBG Kew’s effort to build global research infrastructure to advance our understanding of flowering plant tree of life,” says Mabel Lum, Program Manager at Bioplatforms Australia and member of the GAP consortium. Our dedication to promoting creativity and teamwork in scientific research is demonstrated by this successful collaboration, which served as a platform for upcoming discoveries that will influence how future generations will comprehend nature. “.

applying the principle of the plant tree of life.

Research on biodiversity has a lot of potential when it comes to the flowering plant tree of life. This is so because, just as an element’s properties can be predicted based on where it is in the periodic table, a species’ properties can be predicted based on where it is in the tree of life. As a result, the new information will be crucial for improving numerous scientific fields and beyond.

The tree, along with all the supporting data, has been made publicly and freely available to the scientific community and the general public. This is made possible through the Kew Tree of Life Explorer. The authors of the study think that democratizing access to scientific data worldwide requires this kind of open access.

By allowing scientists to combine the data with artificial intelligence to identify plant species that may contain molecules with therapeutic potential, open access will also enable them to make the most effective use of the data. In a similar vein, the tree of life can be utilized to forecast and gain a better understanding of how pests and diseases will impact American plants. K. at a later time. The applications of this data will ultimately depend on how creatively scientists are able to use it, as the authors point out.

Dr. “Plant chemicals have inspired many pharmaceutical drugs, but still have great untapped potential to aid future drug discovery,” says Melanie-Jayne Howes, Senior Research Leader at RBG Kew, who was not an author on the study but will use the data in her research. The difficult part of finding new medications outside of the ca is deciding which to look into scientifically. 330,000 species of plants that bloom.

“At Kew, we’re using artificial intelligence (AI) to identify plant species that could have malaria-causing compounds. This enormous new dataset’s availability presents intriguing chances to improve these forecasts and hasten the development of plant-based medications for illnesses like malaria and other conditions. “.”.

exceptional species in the tree of life’s blooming plants.

Hesperelaea palmeri, or Guadalupe Island olive (olivo de la Isla de Guadalupe), is extinct because of feral goats. Identified through sequencing of a Kew herbarium specimen that was procured in 1875 by physician Edward Palmer from Guadalupe Island, off the coast of Baja California, Mexico. Overgrazing by non-native goats has led to the extinction of this olive tree, which is a member of the Olive family (Oleaceae).

The oldest sequenced specimen is Arenaria globiflora, popularly referred to as Nepalese sandwort. derived from a specimen that Nathaniel Wallich had collected for the Kew Herbarium in 1829. This amazing example is from a Himalayan mountain plant that reaches elevations of more than 3,600 meters.

The identity of Pilostyles aethiopica, a member of the stemsucker family (Apodanthaceae), has been revealed as a parasitic plant family. Sequenced from plant tissue obtained in 2012 by Sidonie Bellot of Kew. This strange parasite only becomes noticeable when it bursts into bloom. It resides inside the branches of other plants. After some research, it was discovered that it belongs in the Malpighiales group, not the Cucurbitales family, which includes begonias and pumpkins.

Unusual tropical tree reclassified: Medusanthera laxiflora, a member of the family Stemonuraceae, which includes buff-beech. derived from a Kew herbarium specimen that was collected in Indonesian New Guinea in 1993. It was once thought to belong to the holly family, but this little tropical tree has strange pin fruits. Its genus and family have been reorganized into an entirely new order in the New Tree of Life.

Cephalostachyum capitatum, a member of the grass family (Poaceae), is the bamboo from Hooker’s 1850s Himalayan expedition. sequenced from a herbarium specimen that was gathered in India in 1850 by Thomas Thomson, a friend of Joseph Hooker, the second director of RBG Kew.