Four hundred million years of silica biomineralization in land plants.

ABSTRACT: Biomineralization plays a fundamental role in the global silicon cycle. Grasses are known to mobilize significant quantities of Si in the form of silica biominerals and dominate the terrestrial realm today, but they have relatively recent origins and only rose to taxonomic and ecological prominence within the Cenozoic Era. This raises questions regarding when and how the biological silica cycle evolved. To address these questions, we examined silica abundances of extant members of early-diverging land plant clades, which show that silica biomineralization is widespread across terrestrial plant linages. Particularly high silica abundances are observed in lycophytes and early-diverging ferns. However, silica biomineralization is rare within later-evolving gymnosperms, implying a complex evol

SUBMITTER: Trembath-Reichert E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4418875 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature