Evolutionary origins of the endosperm in flowering plants.docVIP

/2002/3/9/reviews/1026.1 Minireview Evolutionary origins of the endosperm in flowering plants Célia Baroux, Charles Spillane and Ueli Grossniklaus Address: Institute of Plant Biology, Zollikerstrasse 107, CH-8008 Zürich, Switzerland. Correspondence: Ueli Grossniklaus. E-mail: grossnik@botinst.unizh.ch Published: 30 August 2002 GenomeBiology 2002, 3(9):reviews1026.1–1026.5 The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at /2002/3/9/reviews/1026 ? BioMed Central Ltd (Print ISSN 1465-6906; Online ISSN 1465-6914) Abstract The evolutionary origin of double fertilization and the resultant endosperm tissue in flowering plants remains a puzzle, despite over a century of research. The recent resurgence of approaches to evolutionary developmental biology combining comparative biology with phylogenetics provides new understanding of endosperm origins. In seeds of flowering plants, the embryo is surrounded by a nutritive tissue called endosperm. Embryo and endosperm are derived from individual fertilization events (double fer- tilization) and develop embedded in maternal tissues that form the seed coat. Despite the nutritional and economical importance of the endosperm, which makes up about 80% of a corn kernel or a wheat grain, the evolutionary origin of this crucial food storage tissue remains unclear. The triploid nature of the endosperm is typical for most flowering plants, including all important crops and the model system Ara- bidopsis thaliana. The notion that double fertilization and triploid endosperm are specific features of flowering plants tightly linked to their evolutionary origin has recently been challenged. A study of endosperm in primitive flowering plants, such as the waterlily family, suggests that their diploid endosperm may be the remnant of an ancestral state [1,2]. This new information, combined with novel and estab- lished ideas, allo