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Marchantia Polymorpha

Let us introduce to you to Marchantia Polymorpha (or Polly for short). On this page you can find general information about our little plant, the reasons we love her and her development in becoming the new chassis for plant Synthetic Biology (and some trivia at the end).

Who is Marchantia?

Let's leave the botanical jargon and head to the gardens:

Intro to Byrophytes and how to get in their clang

Primitive plants are everywhere and together are called Byrophytes. Byrophytes are divided into three lineages. In evolutionary order these are:

• Marchantiaphyta or Liverworts (that's Poly!)
• then came Mosses (byrophyta)
• and finally the newer Hornworts or Anthocerotophyta.
• then came all the rest.

What makes Byrophytes special: Role-Reversal Plants and Nature's strange ways

Byrophytes are united by unique features. These include:

• Sexual reproduction by spores - a fine line between bacteria, yeast and these plants
• No cumbersome flowers or energy absorbing seeds
• No lignin (what makes plants tough) or vascualture
and last but not least
• a reversed life cycle!

Byrophytes are indeed often referred to as 'Up-Side-Down' or 'Role-Reversal' plants. Their life cycle is the opposite of most: We and other organisms spend our life as diploids: two sets of chromosomes, one from Dad, one from Mother. We specialize a set of cells in our reproductive organs which undergo meiosis (splitting of cells to form 2 cells with 1 copy of each gene), forming a haploid egg or sperm. When the sperm and the egg come together, they form a haploid organism which grows. And the cycle starts again.

Byrophytes live most of their life as haploids (only have one copy of their genes!). A set of cells differentiate to become the ova and the sperm. When the haploid sperm reaches the haploid ova, they fuse, become diploid for a short time, and then undergo meiosis (split genome) to form two haploid plants! Intrigued by this oddity? Go to 'Marchantia's Life Cycle' to find out more.

But let's not underestimate them...

Close up on Mar-cam-tiophytes (liverworts)

Primitve does not mean frail; quite the contrary.

Looks, Location and Loveliness

Poly can be found found worldwide from tropical and arctic climates to your backyard! She likes moist soil or rocks in damp habitats. Her favourite hide-outs include banks of pools and rivers, bogs, fens and dune slacks. You can easily find her in man-made habitats such as gardens, paths and greenhouses. Some even dare calling her a horticultural weed! After fires, she rapidly colonizes the burnt ground, restoring an eco-stystem.

Morphology

Liverworts are wither of the leafy or thalose variety. Marchantia Polymorpha is a thallose one. Thallus means simply undifferentiated plant tissue. (not very descriptive)

The Dilemma: Food or Water?

Being thin, flat with a large surface area is great to maximise sunlight absorption and to photosynthesise lots; this comes at a cost: water evaporation. Plants that thrive have evolved to an optimum intermediate. Poly exhibits a beautiful simple morphological adaptation: air pores, the ancestors of the current stomata that most plants now have.

Rosette growth and Splash cups

Poly grows out in a rosette shape. If a thallus reaches the soil, it can become the start of a new plant. However this doesn't get her very far. At ___- weeks of development, a gemma cup appears at the centre of a thallus. The cup contains loose cells. As rain drops into the cup, the loose cells are propulsed out to find new ground to conquer. This allows simple rapid asexual isogenic reproduction

Reproductive Organs

Sexual reproduction, which allows gene mixing between two plants is another matter. Upon maturation at ___ weeks, the haploid Poly grows a reproductive stem at the centre. For the males, this is called a __ and resembles a flat disc on a stem. It bears the spores that will disperse. In females,an Umbrella appears.Underneath it is the protected Ova. With wind, rain or a researchers hand, the sperm is let loose and flies to collect under the sticky surface of the umbrella. Magic occurs: sperm and ova fuse. The diploid result undergoes recombination (gene mixing), divides multiple times and undergoes meiosis. The product is over ___ of haploid potential progeny with genomic diversity.
The reproductive organs can be stimulated to appear by exposure to infra-red light!

The new Mar-vellous Chassis

OpenPlant

Synthetic Biology conferences used to be like vegetable gardens (or zoos), with every researcher working on different organisms: a longer courgette here, a sweeter tomato there. Great to make some tasty dishes but a real halt for science. The animal field concentrated their forces from dogs and cats to Drosophila fly and the C.elegant worm, and the green handed people went for Arabidopsis or Tabacco. Focusing on these few and simple organisms allowed science, techniques to be shared and developed by a community and core concepts, true for any higher organisms, emanated from this thrust.

Arabidopsis, is a great plant however some of its disadvantages, long life cycle, height, complex development is refraining progress. A wave is now building up as we speak behind Marchantia to develop it as the new tool for Synthetic Biologists and Plant Scientists. _ Watch this space_ (or even better: read on!)

The Beauty of Simplicity: Advantages of Marchy

Why Marchantia as the new plant chassis?

For any system to be adopted and developed and made better it needs to be: simple, accessible and better than any previous system. Marchantia Polymorpha is just this.

• Ancestor to all plants, she illustrates them all.Her simple basic genome is more malleable
• Small in size makes for easy mass culture
• Rapid growth and germination reduces drastically the time of experiments (a big down fall of Arabodopsis)
• Easy transformability with Agorobacteria and possibility of electroporating the spores!
• Dioecious. Sexual reproduction allows for crossing of two strains of plants. Or if you want to keep an isogenic line, you can propagate her asexually.
• Easy long term storage of spores that requires no maintenance!
• Open Community Established

Collaborators and future for iGEM

The Welcome Trust has recently given a huge push to the Marchantia Lovers. And these are sprouting from everywhere. For future iGEM groups who'd like to join this Marchantia Community, here are some of the people who are already in the stream (and would love to here from you!)

For advice, plant strains to get started or just some info, contact:

• Us!
• The Haseloff group in Cambridge- (home of the OpenPlant)
• Tokyo
• MIT
• JIC
• UEA??
• Online Community!

Marky Fun Facts & Trivia

world records

References