Abstract
Plant phototropism, the ability to bend toward or away from light, is predominantly controlled by blue-light photoreceptors, the phototropins. Although phototropins have been well-characterized in Arabidopsis thaliana, their evolutionary history is largely unknown. In this study, we complete an in-depth survey of phototropin homologs across land plants and algae using newly available transcriptomic and genomic data. We show that phototropins originated in an ancestor of Viridiplantae (land plants + green algae). Phototropins repeatedly underwent independent duplications in most major land-plant lineages (mosses, lycophytes, ferns, and seed plants), but remained single-copy genes in liverworts and hornworts—an evolutionary pattern shared with another family of photoreceptors, the phytochromes. Following each major duplication event, the phototropins differentiated in parallel, resulting in two specialized, yet partially overlapping, functional forms that primarily mediate either low- or high-light responses. Our detailed phylogeny enables us to not only uncover new phototropin lineages, but also link our understanding of phototropin function in Arabidopsis with what is known in Adiantum and Physcomitrella (the major model organisms outside of flowering plants). We propose that the convergent functional divergences of phototropin paralogs likely contributed to the success of plants through time in adapting to habitats with diverse and heterogeneous light conditions.
Introduction
Light is the ultimate source of energy for almost all of life on earth, and a remarkable diversity of organisms uses photosynthesis to convert light into metabolic energy. Many of these organisms have also evolved phototropic/phototactic responses, and those in plants are particularly sophisticated—involving movement of shoots, leaves, and/or chloroplasts—in order to optimize their photosynthetic capacity. Charles Darwin pioneered modern research on phototropism by demonstrating that the coleoptile tip is the point of light perception (). Darwin proposed that a transmissible substance produced at the tip is responsible for inducing phototropic movements in plants. This insight led to the first discovery of a plant hormone, auxin, and later to the identification of the blue-light photoreceptors for phototropism—phototropins (; ; ).
Phototropins regulate key physiological responses that are under light control, including positive phototropism of shoots, negative phototropism of roots, chloroplast accumulation, and avoidance, stomatal opening, leaf expansion, and seedling elongation (). Our current understanding of the function and biochemistry of phototropins originates from basic research on A. thaliana, and to a lesser extent on Adiantum capillus-veneris (a fern) and Physcomitrella patens (a moss). Only a few studies have attempted to address the origin and evolution of phototropins (; ; ) and all were based on limited sequence samples. The orthology of phototropin genes has therefore been ambiguous, confounding assignments of functional homology, and impeding our understanding of how phototropin evolution has allowed plants to adapt to light environments.
An extraordinary phototropin derivative is neochrome, which possesses supplementary red/far-red-sensing domains from phytochromes (). In ferns, neochrome can sense both blue and red/far-red light to modulate chloroplast movement and phototropism (; ). We previously reconstructed a phototropin phylogeny with an aim to elucidate the origin of neochromes (). However, that phylogeny had insufficient taxon sampling to accurately infer broad patterns of phototropin evolution, including the position of key phototropin duplications.
For this study, we greatly expanded our search for phototropins in genomes and transcriptomes from across land plants, green algae, red algae, glaucophytes, cryptophytes, haptophytes, and stramenopiles (Supplementary Tables S1 and S2). Using these data, we reconstructed a detailed phylogeny of phototropins and examined patterns of gene duplication. Our results suggest that phototropins likely originated in an ancestor of Viridiplantae (land plants + green algae). By reviewing published phototropin functional studies in light of our new gene phylogeny, we determined that phototropin paralogs repeatedly underwent functional divergences. These were likely to be important for adapting to diverse and heterogeneous light environments through time.
Materials and Methods
Mining Phototropin Homologs from Transcriptomes and Genomes
We searched a total of 194 transcriptomes and 26 genomes (Supplementary Table S1). To mine phototropin homologs, we used the BlueDevil python pipeline following for transcriptomes, and for genomes we used BLASTp implemented in Phytozome () or individual genome portals (Supplementary Tables S1 and S2). A phototropin sequence from Anthoceros bharadwajii [voucher: Chantanaorrapint 229 (PSU)] was obtained by PCR and cloning (primers: photF1970 and photR4102; ).
Sequence Alignment and Phylogenetic Reconstruction
We used MUSCLE () with the default settings to align the amino acid sequences, and then back-translated these to nucleotides. The resulting alignment was manually improved based on known domain boundaries; unalignable regions were excluded prior to phylogenetic analyses. The final alignment length is 2,025 bp, within which most of the sequences are complete or near complete (Supplementary Figure S1).
We used PartitionFinder v1.1.1 () to obtain the optimal data partitioning scheme (by codon position) and the associated nucleotide substitution models (GTR + I+ Γ substitution model applied independently to the first, second, and third codon positions). Garli v2.0 () was employed to find the best maximum likelihood tree with “genthreshfortopoterm” set to 500,000 and eight independent runs from different random-addition starting trees. We carried out bootstrapping to assess branch support, using RAxML v8.1.11 () with 1,000 replicates. The same partition scheme and models were used in MrBayes v3.2.3 () Bayesian inference. We carried out two independent MCMC runs, each with four chains and trees sampled every 1,000 generations (chain length: 6.451 × 109 generations). We unlinked substitution parameters and set the rate prior to vary among subsets. The resulting MCMC statistics were inspected in Tracer () to ensure convergence and proper mixing; 25% of the total generations were discarded as burn-in before compiling the majority consensus tree. The alignment and tree files are deposited in Dryad1.
Target Enrichment for Confirming Phototropin Copy Number in Hornworts
The target enrichment data were from , whereby a hornwort (Anthoceros punctatus) DNA library was hybridized with 7,502 120mer RNA probes to enrich phototropin, phytochrome, and neochrome homologs. The probe sequences can be found in Dryad2. We used an enrichment protocol of , which can potentially capture sequences with similarity as low as 61%. The captured fragments were sequenced on one-tenth of a MiSeq (250 bp paired-end) run. The reads are deposited in NCBI SRA (SRP055877). We used Scythe v0.994 () to remove the adaptor sequences with the default prior contamination rate, and Sickle v1.33 () to trim the low-quality bases with a quality threshold of 33. We assembled the processed reads using SOAPdenovo () with kmer of 33, 63, and 93, and used CAP3 () to merge the three assemblies from different kmer sizes. The phototropin contigs were identified by BLASTn ().
Results
The Origin of Phototropins
We show here that phototropins are present in all major land plant lineages (seed plants, ferns, lycophytes, mosses, liverworts, and hornworts), as well as in green algae (charophytes, chlorophytes, and prasinophytes; Figure 1A). In contrast, we did not recover phototropins from glaucophytes, red algae (rhodophytes), cryptophytes, haptophytes, or stramenopiles, indicating that the origin of phototropin most likely took place in a common ancestor of Viridiplantae (green algae + land plants; Figure 1A).
FIGURE 1
Phototropin Phylogeny
Our phototropin phylogeny is largely congruent with published organismal relationships (
FIGURE 2

Phylogenetic relationships of seed plant and fern phototropins. The phylogeny tree continues to Figures 3 and 4. Orange circles indicate inferred phototropin (PHOT) duplication events. The italicized capital letter within each circle corresponds to the duplication event mentioned in the text, and the numbers/letters adjacent to each orange circle are the names of the gene duplicates. Support values associated with branches are maximum likelihood bootstrap values (BS)/Bayesian posterior probabilities (PP); these are only displayed (along with thickened branches) if BS > 70 and PP > 0.95. “+” denotes BS = 100 or PP = 1.00. Thickened branches without numbers are 100/1.0. “?” indicates that the exact phylogenetic position of the gene duplication event is ambiguous.
FIGURE 3

Phylogenetic relationships of lycophyte and bryophyte phototropins. The phylogeny tree is continued from Figure 2. Previous gene annotations for Physcomitrella patens are in parentheses. Orange circles indicate inferred phototropin (PHOT) duplication events. The italicized capital letter within each circle corresponds to the duplication event mentioned in the text, and the numbers/letters adjacent to each orange circle are the names of the gene duplicates. Support values associated with branches are maximum likelihood bootstrap values (BS)/Bayesian posterior probabilities (PP); these are only displayed (along with thickened branches) if BS > 70 and PP > 0.95. “+” denotes BS = 100 or PP = 1.00. Thickened branches without numbers are 100/1.0. “?” indicates that the exact phylogenetic position of the gene duplication event is ambiguous.
All liverwort transcriptomes we examined contained a single phototropin (Figure 3), a result consistent with the recent demonstration that phototropin in Marchantia polymorpha is a single-copy gene (
Moss phototropins, on the other hand, have a significantly more complex evolutionary history (Figures 1C and 3). We discovered that the published phototropin annotations from the moss P. patens genome (
Table 1
| Proposed new name | Previous annotation | Genbank accession |
|---|---|---|
| PpPHOT1A-1 | PpPHOTA1 | XM_001774204 |
| PpPHOT1A-2 | PpPHOTA2 | XM_001774562 |
| PpPHOT1A-3 | PpPHOTB3 | XM_001755269 |
| PpPHOT1B | PpPHOTA3 | XM_001765356 |
| PpPHOT2B | PpPHOTB2 | XM_001785674 |
| PpPHOT2C-1 | PpPHOTB1 | XM_001766357 |
| PpPHOT2C-2 | PpPHOTA4 | XM_001763052 |
Reclassification of Physcomitrella patens phototropins based on gene orthology.
FIGURE 4

Phylogenetic relationships of algal phototropins. The phylogenetic tree is continued from Figure 3. Orange circles indicate inferred phototropin (PHOT) duplication events. The italicized capital letter within each circle corresponds to the duplication event mentioned in the text, and the numbers/letters adjacent to each orange circle are the names of the gene duplicates. Support values associated with branches are maximum likelihood bootstrap values (BS)/Bayesian posterior probabilities (PP); these are only displayed (along with thickened branches) if BS > 70 and PP > 0.95. “+” denotes BS = 100 or PP = 1.00. Thickened branches without numbers are 100/1.0.
All Algal Neochromes Lack the Conserved Cysteine Residue at the LOV2 Domain
Neochrome (neo, Figures 3 and 4) is a unique chimeric phototropin variant that possesses supplementary red/far-red-sensing domains from phytochromes (
To explore whether M. scalaris might be anomalous among zygnematalean algae in having a neochrome that is not responsive to blue light, we examined all the algal neochromes that we recovered. As is the case with the neochrome of M. scalaris, none has the conserved cysteine residue in the LOV2 domain (Figure 5) that is essential for the formation of flavin mononucleotide (FMN) chromophore adduct and blue-light signal transduction (
FIGURE 5

Alignment of a portion of LOV1 and LOV2 domains in selected phototropins and neochromes. The site for flavin mononucleotide (FMN) adduct formation is marked by an arrow, and the FMN-interacting sites are shown in green with a blue background. All zygnematalean neochromes (highlighted in a gray box) lack the conserved cysteine residue in the LOV2 domain, and several residues that interact with FMN are also not conserved.
Discussions
A New Phototropin Gene Orthology
With a detailed phototropin phylogeny that encompasses all of green plant representatives, we were able to discover new phototropin lineages and pinpoint the timing of gene duplications (Figures 1–4). This new understanding of phototropin gene orthology refutes the previous assertion that the “PHOT2” ortholog is the ancestral phototropin and that “PHOT1” evolved later in seed plants (
Convergent Sub-Functionalization of Phototropins
Our findings on gene orthology also have important implications for understanding the functional evolution of phototropins. Plants often respond differently under low- and high-light levels; chloroplasts, in particular, accumulate on the periclinal walls under weak light, but retreat to anticlinal walls when the light intensity is too high. Our phylogenetic reconstruction suggests that phototropins repeatedly duplicated and diverged, and that after doing so, they subsequently specialized in mediating either low– or high-light responses, although functional redundancies do exist (
The single phototropin in the liverwort M. polymorpha can respond to a wide range of light intensities and triggers both chloroplast avoidance and accumulation responses (
Compared to land-plant phototropins, much less is known about the function of algal phototropins, where most of the research done on Chlamydomonas reinhardtii shows that phototropins regulate sexual processes (
Patterns of Phototropin Copy Expansion and Stasis Resemble that of Phytochromes
The evolutionary pattern that we observe here for phototropins shows a striking resemblance to that for phytochromes. Both photoreceptors (phytochromes and phototropins) duplicated repeatedly in seed plants, ferns, lycophytes, and mosses, while remaining single-copy in liverworts and hornworts (Figure 1;
Conclusion
In summary, we have leveraged recent genomic and transcriptomic data to discover phototropins from across a broad sample of photosynthetic eukaryotes. Our study reveals that phototropins are unique to Viridiplantae, and that gene family expansion and stasis have operated uniquely within each of the various land plant lineages, a pattern similar to that of phytochromes (
Statements
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant DEB-1407158 (to KMP and F-WL), and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (to F-WL). We thank Pryer lab members and two reviewers for suggestions and comments.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Supplementary material
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpls.2015.00637
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Summary
Keywords
blue-light, convergent evolution, land plants, photoreceptors, phototropism
Citation
Li F-W, Rothfels CJ, Melkonian M, Villarreal JC, Stevenson DW, Graham SW, Wong GK-S, Mathews S and Pryer KM (2015) The origin and evolution of phototropins. Front. Plant Sci. 6:637. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2015.00637
Received
11 July 2015
Accepted
31 July 2015
Published
12 August 2015
Volume
6 - 2015
Edited by
Hirokazu Tsukaya, The University of Tokyo, Japan
Reviewed by
Noriyuki Suetsugu, Kyoto University, Japan; Jon Hughes, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany
Copyright
© 2015 Li, Rothfels, Melkonian, Villarreal, Stevenson, Graham, Wong, Mathews and Pryer.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Fay-Wei Li, Department of Biology, Duke University, Biological Sciences Building, 130 Science Drive, Durham, NC 27708, USA, fay.wei.li@duke.edu
This article was submitted to Plant Evolution and Development, a section of the journal Frontiers in Plant Science
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