Systems acclimation to osmotic stress in zygnematophyte cells
Abstract
Zygnematophytes are the closest algal relatives of land plants. They hold key information to infer how the earliest land plants overcame the barrage of terrestrial stressors, the prime of which is osmotic stress. Here, we apply two osmotic stressors on a unicellular and a multicellular representative of zygnematophytes and study their responses over a 25-hour time course, generating 130, 60, and 30 transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic samples combined with photophysiology, sugar analysis, immunocytochemical glycoprotein analysis, and microscopy. Our data highlight a shared protein chassis that shows divergent responses with the same outcome: successful acclimation to osmotic challenges. We establish a model of how the algal sisters of land plants can overcome a prime stressor in the terrestrial habitat and highlight components of the plant terrestrialization toolkit.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Biocrusts and Microbial Ecology
Photosynthetic Processes and Mechanisms
Plant responses to water stress
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Nature Communications
- Publisher
- Springer Science and Business Media LLC
- Volume
- 17
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 755–755
- Publication date
- 16 January 2026
- Language
- EN