New study on water lily sheds light on Darwin's «abominable mystery»

BEIJING. KAZINFORM Scientists have reported the high-quality genome sequence of blue-petal water lily, an ancient flowering plant, shedding new light on Charles Darwin's «abominable mystery».
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More than 300,000 species of flowering plants, also known as angiosperms, have emerged since their origin 200 million years ago, which is a marvellous number compared with 800 of its brother organisms, gymnosperms, Xinhua reports.

As one of the first diverging branches of flowering plants, water lily, beautiful aquatic flower, may hold the key to explain how flowering plants became dominant so rapidly in ecosystems across the world, a problem termed as an «abominable mystery» by Charles Darwin.

In a study published online on the journal Nature in December, researchers acquired the high-quality genome sequence of blue-petal water lily and found a whole-genome duplication event during the species' ancestor period.

The study showed that the duplication event contributed to the origin and wide distribution of water lilies, said the paper's first author Zhang Liangsheng from Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University in east China. The research results are key to reveal the origin and evolution of flowering plants, he added.

The researchers also studied the genes that form the color of blue-petal water lily, which may help gardeners cultivate blue flowers.


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