Resurrection plants have the unique ability to survive extreme dehydration (desiccation), lying dormant for months or sometimes years until rehydration is possible. This formidable survival strategy has independently evolved several times across the land plant phylogeny, and several phylogenetically diverse resurrection plant genomes have been sequenced and assembled in an attempt to understand the causal genetic mechanisms. Large-scale comparisons across each of these phylogenetically distant resurrection plant genomes reveals that some conserved molecular signatures may underlie desiccation tolerance (Illing et al., 2005; Zhang and Bartels, 2018), but overall the genes, networks, and regulatory factors that underlie desiccation tolerance remain largely unknown.
Journal: The Plant cell
DOI: 10.1105/tpc.18.00910
Year: 2018