Symbiotic diversification relies on an ancestral gene network in plants

We produced the two first genomes of leafy liverworts and demonstrated that one of them, Calypogeia fissa is likely polyploid. Transcriptomic assays of C. fissa in different nutritional and symbiotic conditions revealed that symbiosis is driven by phosphate availability in a nitrogen-dependent manner. Using coombination of functional experiments and multispecies transcriptomics, we demonstrated that the signaling pathway controlling the infection of plants in intracellular symbioses is conserved in land plants.