Ruhlman, Tracey A., Wan-Jung Chang, Jeremy JW Chen, Yao-Ting Huang, Ming-Tsair Chan, Jin Zhang, De-Chih Liao et al. “NDH expression marks major transitions in plant evolution and reveals coordinate intracellular gene loss.” BMC plant biology 15, no. 1 (2015): 1-9.
URL1 URL2
Key innovations have facilitated novel niche utilization, such as the movement of the algal predecessors of land plants into terrestrial habitats where drastic fluctuations in light intensity, ultraviolet radiation and water limitation required a number of adaptations. The NDH (NADH dehydrogenase-like) complex of Viridiplantae plastids participates in adapting the photosynthetic response to environmental stress, suggesting its involvement in the transition to terrestrial habitats. Although relatively rare, the loss or pseudogenization of plastid NDH genes is widely distributed across diverse lineages of photoautotrophic seed plants and mutants/transgenics lacking NDH function demonstrate little difference from wild type under non-stressed conditions. This study analyzes large transcriptomic and genomic datasets to evaluate the persistence and loss of NDH expression across plants.