Why we need more non-seed plant models

New Phytol.       online article

Out of a hundred sequenced and published land plant genomes, four are not of flowering plants. This severely skewed taxonomic sampling hinders our comprehension of land plant evolution at large. If we are to gain a deeper understanding of how plants evolved and still evolve, and which of their developmental patterns are ancestral or derived, we need to study a more diverse set of plants. Here, I thus argue that we need to sequence genomes of so far neglected  lineages, and that we need to develop more non-seed plant model species.