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Plant evolutionary research has made leaps in exploring the deep evolutionary roots of embryophytes. A solid phylogenomic framework was established, allowing evolutionary inferences. Comparative genomic approaches revealed that many genes coding for transcription factors, morphogenetic regulators, specialized metabolic enzymes, phytohormone signaling, and more are not innovations of land plants but have a deep streptophyte algal ancestry. Are these just spurious homologs, or do they actualize traits we deem important in embryophytes? Building on streptophyte algae genome data, current endeavors delve into the functional significance of whole cohorts of homologs by leveraging the power of comparative high-throughput approaches. This ushered in the identification of recurrent themes in function, ultimately providing a functional genomic definition for the toolkit of plant terrestrialization.
Kunz et al. (Sat,) studied this question.