When you’re a tiny fern in a big, cruel world, how do you survive insect attacks and stay fed? Teaming up with bacteria might do the trick! Biologists have sequenced the genomes of ferns for the first time, and the two species they’ve started with are already revealing trade secrets, adding to our understanding of how partnering with bacteria helps them repel hungry insects and get the nutritious nitrogen they need. The ferns’ genomes also fill gaps in biologists’ understanding of the evolutionary history of the plant kingdom.
Of the major plant lineages, ferns were the only ones without any genomes sequenced until now, even though they include up to a whopping 15,000 species. Fay-Wei Li, a plant scientist and self-proclaimed fern enthusiast at the Boyce Thompson Institute and Cornell University, led the study published today in Nature Plants to sequence the genomes of two fern species — Azolla filiculoides and Salvinia cucullata.
