The next time you're walking through the woods in winter, take a moment to see for those who can spot considered one of nature's most persistent and hearty survivors.
No, a patch of brown grass peeping from a snow-bank, or an acre of trees with their bare twigs and branches, waiting for spring.
Look down, and the one green you'll see is under your boot — a lush carpet of moss.
For Björn Hamberger, a James K. Billman Jr., MD, Endowed Professor within the Department of Biology and Molecular Biology within the College of Natural Sciences, that yearlong rigor is some extent of admiration in itself.
“It gives you an idea of ​​how resilient these organisms are, and it's probably one of the reasons why mosses have stuck around and not died out through evolution,” Hamburger said.
But it's also the start line for research with a scope that spans the ages — from ancient Earth to humanity's future in space. The latest paper, appearing within the Hamburger lab, seeks to raised understand how mosses and other plants conquered our planet, and to accomplish that, they got some much-needed help from their longtime companions, fungi. How did you get it?
From early Earth to future Mars
Mosses made the transition to Earth 450 million years ago in the course of the Ordovician period, a process that Hamburger suspects couldn’t have been completed without some teamwork.
When Kyle made landfall, they’d to account for a lot of recent and difficult variables, including water regulation, gravity, temperature fluctuations and exposure to UV light.
Thankfully, the moss encountered a landscape that was already colonized by primitive fungi whose root-like networks, or mycelium, could absorb vital nutrients from the soil. In exchange for these nutrients, the early land plants provided the fungi with a source of carbon, starting a brand new relationship that persists to at the present time.
“At least 80 percent of modern plants still cooperate with fungi in some way, helping them grow stronger and become more resilient,” Hamburger explained. “As we look to a future where plants need to sustain growing populations, this will be an important factor.”
Having worked with mosses for greater than a decade, Hamburger and his research group participated in a special exhibit on the Detroit Science Gallery in 2019 called “Fog of Dawn,” which featured mosses growing in terrariums. was intended to simulate Earth's early environment and subsequent occupation. of plants and fungi.
The group also engineered moss to disclose exotic, advanced land plant biochemical pathways, producing products akin to patchouli oil.
Here, Hamburger sees exciting potential within the realm of space exploration. Moss and other plants can act as natural catalysts for constructing materials or medicine by converting carbon dioxide into oxygen during space flights.
“If you could bring plants with you on a trip like this and give them the blueprints to make useful products, that would reduce the enormous weight of raw materials in orbit,” Hamburger said.
“Also, when it comes to terraforming a place like Mars, why not start with moss — a plant that has successfully transformed our own planet?”
With their latest research, the Hamburger lab hopes to further pull back the curtain on plant-microbial interactions and explore the ways in which mosses and fungi interact on the microscopic level.
Friend or Foe?
To accomplish these goals, Hamburger and Davis-Matthews, a doctoral student and first creator of the paper, designed an experiment that will provide a front-row seat to moss-fungi interactions in real time.
Over the course of three months, the lab observed the moss, Phsycomitrium patens, colonizing different terrariums. Some habitats were completely devoid of fungi, while others co-existed with two species of the soil-dwelling fungal lineage, the Mortarilaceae, which were likely present at the identical time that plants began to beat the land. what was
The fungus was provided by fungal and geneticist Greg Bonito, an associate professor in MSU's Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences and a longtime collaborator of Hamburger's.
Using microscopy, genetic evaluation and Raspberry Pi microcomputers, the researchers tracked the subtle but distinct ways in which moss communicates with its fungal neighbors. The team discovered that these interactions trusted a singular addition to the forged – the endobacteria contained in the fungi.
These endobacteria provided a difficult query of their very own. Endobacteria are completely depending on their fungal host for survival, however it was not clear whether or not they valued the connection.
“In general, endobacteria are not considered beneficial to fungi, whose cells have to suffer some major commercial losses to accommodate them,” Mathew said. “Of course that raises the question: Why are they still around?”
Mathew and others found that fungi can more easily interact with their mossy neighbors when endobacteria are present. When experiments were conducted with fungi whose endobacteria had been removed, a fancy web of relationships became apparent.
For example, one form of fungus appeared to “eat” the moss from the within when its endobacteria were present. But in samples where endobacteria weren’t present?
“It lives side by side with the moss, completely indifferent,” explained Matthew.
Meanwhile, one other form of fungus that benefited the moss modified its behavior when its endobacteria were removed. The fungi began to develop spore-like structures indicating stress and now not colonized the moss as they’d previously done.
The Hamburger lab looks forward to further unraveling these friend-or-foe relationships between mosses, fungi and endobacteria, and what these discoveries mean for understanding life on Earth.
“We thought we'd start with something simple and straightforward — the beginnings of land plant life,” Hamburger said sarcastically. “But it turns out that this is a very interesting and very complex story that can teach us something about what happened during the evolution of land plants, what we found on this planet and what we might find on a different planet. “
He also hopes that this research can spark interest within the necessary lifestyles we undergo daily, often without realizing it.
“Maybe it's a bit of an incentive for cold-blooded creatures that can live in harsh conditions and are the first to say, 'Yeah, come on' in the spring, when the snow melts and the sunlight returns.” Is.”