A meadow of seagrass (Z. marina)CHRISTOPHER BOSTROM (VIA EUREKALERT)
Species: Zostera marina
Genome size: 202.3 million base pairs
Seagrass, Zostera marina, provides the basis for some of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, growing in meadows that offer habitats for marine animals and protect the coastline from erosion. But seagrass is also evolutionarily unique, in that it is the only flowering plant to have transitioned from land to sea. Now its genome, published last month (January 27) in Nature, is starting to reveal how it made the switch.
“They have re-engineered themselves,” study coauthor Jeanine Olsen of the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, said of the plants in a statement. She added that a suite of genetic adaptations to marine life means that “there’s no way back to land for seagrass.”
Using their ...
