Plants maintain populations of stem cells to generate new organs throughout the course of their lives. The pathways that regulate plant stem cell maintenance have garnered great interest over the past decades, as variation in these pathways contributes plant morphological diversity and can be harnessed for crop improvement. In order to facilitate cross-species comparisons of gene function and better understand how these stem cell regulatory pathways evolved, we undertook a functionally informed phylogenetic analysis of leucine-rich receptor-like kinases (LRR-RLK) and related proteins across diverse land plant model systems. Based on our phylogenetic analysis and on functional data, we propose a naming scheme for these stem cell signaling genes. We discovered evidence for frequent loss of protein domains in angiosperms but not in bryophytes. In addition, several clades of stem cell signaling genes are closely related to genes that function in immunity, although these distinct developmental and immune functions likely separated or after the divergence of lycophytes and angiosperms. Overall, the phylogenetic framework and evolutionary hypotheses we provide here will empower future research on cross-species comparisons of stem cell signaling pathways.

中文翻译：

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一个功能全面的进化框架，用于研究干细胞维持过程中的LRR-RLK。

植物在整个生命过程中维持着干细胞种群，以产生新的器官。在过去的几十年中，调节植物干细胞维持的途径引起了人们的极大兴趣，因为这些途径的变异有助于植物形态的多样性，并可用于改善作物。为了促进跨物种的基因功能比较，并更好地了解这些干细胞调控途径的演变，我们对功能丰富的亮氨酸受体样激酶（LRR-RLK）和相关蛋白质进行了系统地系统分析，涉及多种陆地植物模型系统。基于我们的系统发育分析和功能数据，我们提出了这些干细胞信号传导基因的命名方案。我们发现在被子植物中而不是在苔藓植物中经常丢失蛋白质结构域的证据。此外，干细胞信号转导基因的几个进化枝与具有免疫功能的基因密切相关，尽管这些不同的发育和免疫功能很可能是分开的，或者在裂殖体和被子植物发散之后。总体而言，我们在此处提供的系统发育框架和进化假设将使未来对干细胞信号传导途径的跨物种比较进行研究。