植物凯洛辛的起源,进化和多样化

The diverse plant life on Earth—consisting of nearly 400,000 species—can be divided into three broad categories based on biological characteristics: nonvascular, seedless vascular, and seed plants.

From Water to Land

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

Most plants use the C3 pathway for carbon fixation. However, some plants, such as sugar cane, corn, and cacti that grow in hot conditions, use alternative pathways to fix carbon and conserve energy loss due to photorespiration. Photorespiration is the process that occurs when the oxygen concentration is high. Under such conditions, the rubisco enzyme in the Calvin cycle binds O2 instead of CO2, which halts photosynthesis and consumes energy.
C4 Pathway
The C4 pathway is used by plants such as...

Asexual reproduction allows plants to reproduce without growing flowers, attracting pollinators, or dispersing seeds. Offspring are genetically identical to the parent and produced without the fusion of male and female gametes.

Ribulose 1,5- bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RuBisCo) is a critical enzyme that catalyzes carbon dioxide assimilation during photosynthesis. However, it is an inefficient enzyme, having an extremely slow catalytic rate. A typical enzyme can process about a thousand molecules per second; however, RuBisCo fixes only around three-carbon dioxides per second. Photosynthetic cells compensate for this slow rate by synthesizing very high amounts of RuBisCo, making it the most abundant single...