Fabian van Beveren

Introduction Many land plants rely on mutualistic symbiotic associations to thrive, starting with their common ancestor associating with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi (Rich et al., 2021). Similar to AM symbiosis, multiple other intracellular symbiotic interactions have evolved in land plants, such as ericoid symbiosis in the Ericaceae and root nodule symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the legumes and their relatives (Strullu-Derrien et al., 2018; Radhakrishnan et al., 2020).

Abstract Many land plants rely on mutualistic symbiotic associations to thrive, starting with their common ancestor associating with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. Similar to AM symbiosis, multiple other intracellular symbiotic interactions have evolved in a variety of land plants. Ectomycorrhizal (ECM) symbiosis contrasts with these relationships as there is no intracellular accommodation of the symbiont inside the plant cell, but only intercellular colonization.

Abstract The evolutionary origin of red algae-derived complex plastids remains obscure. Cryptophyta, one of four eukaryotic lineages harboring these plastids, still contain nucleomorphs, highly reduced remnants of red algal nuclei. The genes present on nucleomorph genomes can be used for phylogenomic reconstruction in order to unravel the evolutionary origin of all red complex plastids and provide data independent from previously analyzed plastid-encoded datasets.