From Water to Land

Most plants are seed plants—characterized by seeds, pollen, and reduced gametophytes. Seed plants include gymnosperms and angiosperms.

Plants obtain inorganic minerals and water from the soil, which acts as a natural medium for land plants. The composition and quality of soil depend not only on the chemical constituents but also on the presence of living organisms. In general, soils contain three major components:

Plants have a life cycle split between two multicellular stages: a haploid stage—with cells containing one set of chromosomes—and a diploid stage—with cells containing two sets of chromosomes. The haploid stage is the gamete-producing gametophyte, and the diploid stage is the spore-producing sporophyte.

A Winogradsky column provides a powerful tool for studying microbial ecology and metabolic interactions in a stratified, self-contained environment. This artificial ecosystem, developed by Sergei Winogradsky in the late 19th century, replicates the complex biogeochemical gradients found in natural sediments, allowing researchers to observe microbial succession and interactions over time.The column is typically assembled in a transparent glass cylinder filled halfway with sediment mixed with...

The cultivation of environmental microorganisms has long been hindered by the inability to replicate complex native conditions in vitro. The isolation chip (iChip) addresses this limitation by facilitating the growth of previously uncultivable microorganisms through in situ incubation. Designed for high-throughput microbial cultivation, the iChip comprises hundreds of microchambers, each capable of housing a single microbial cell. These microchambers are loaded with a mixture of molten agar and...