Macroevolutionary-scale cross-species single-cell analysis reveals cell type founder genes in vascular plants and accelerates gene discovery

We constructed single-cell atlases of above-ground tissues from six representative plants across major vascular plant lineages: Oryza sativa (rice), Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress), Nephrolepis auriculata (sword fern), Selaginella martensii (spikemoss), Pinus tabulaeformis (Chinese pine), and Lycopodium japonicum (Japanese clubmoss). Additionally, we included Adiantum raddianum (maidenhair fern) for genome sequencing and assembly. We integrated these datasets into a comprehensive cell atlas.