Can mosses serve as model organisms for forest research?

17.03.2015

Müller SJ, Gütle DD, Jacquot JP, Reski R

Annals of Forest Science 2015;doi:10.1007/s13595-015-0468-7.

Annals of Forest Science          online article

Mosses are basal land plants that retain many ancestral features that originated during the early colonisation of the land mass of Earth by plants. To date, on the one hand, mosses are present in many ecosystems and can often withstand environmental changes with a high resilience. On the other hand, several mosses have been developed as model organism, providing extensive resources concerning genome annotation as well as molecular biology techniques. We review the current state of moss research and pinpoint potential links to molecular tree research including stress tolerance, organelle biology, cell signalling and polarity, as well as secondary metabolism.