PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Lagercrantz, Ulf
AU  - Billhardt, Anja
AU  - Rousku, Sabine N.
AU  - Eklund, D. Magnus
TI  - Nyctinastic thallus movement in the liverwort <em>Marchantia polymorpha</em> is regulated by a circadian clock
AID  - 10.1101/2020.02.09.940403
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.02.09.940403
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/02/10/2020.02.09.940403.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/02/10/2020.02.09.940403.full
AB  - The circadian clock coordinates an organism’s growth, development and physiology with environmental factors. One illuminating example is the rhythmic growth of hypocotyls and cotyledons in Arabidopsis thaliana. Such daily oscillations in leaf position are often referred to as sleep movements or nyctinasty. Here, we report that plantlets of the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha show analogous rhythmic movements of thallus lobes, and that the circadian clock controls this rhythm, with auxin a likely meditator. The mechanisms of this circadian clock are partly conserved as compared to angiosperms, with homologs to the core clock genes PRR, RVE and TOC1 forming a core transcriptional feedback loop also in M. polymorpha.