Conservation of an epidermal master regulator across land plant evolution

Land plants arose from freshwater green algae. Therefore, the movement to land required a series of developmental innovations to achieve the enormous species diversity we recognise today. One innovation was an outer covering that protects against desiccation. This thesis found that a gene family responsible for directing development of this layer in derived flowering plants likely has the same function in a liverwort, an early diverging land plant lineage. This suggests development of this layer was via a similar process in the first plants 470 million years ago and helps us understand the developmental processes required for the water to land transition.