doi.org/10.1126/science.adt8983
Credibility: 999
#DNA
Scientists have just discovered something impressive in plant DNA: a hidden layer of regulatory sequences that has remained virtually unchanged for more than 400 million years
These parts of DNA function as ancient “switches” that control when and how genes are turned on or off, and they form a kind of evolutionary blueprint that has survived entire geological eras.
For a long time, researchers believed that, unlike animals, plants did not retain these regulatory regions of DNA for as long – those that do not directly encode proteins, but orchestrate the functioning of genes. Plants have genomes that expand greatly, with frequent duplications and rearrangements, making it difficult to detect ancient patterns. But a new approach changed everything.
An international team, led by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Sainsbury Laboratory in Cambridge, has developed a computational tool called Conservatory. It analyzes not only the sequence of letters in DNA, but mainly the order and organization of genes around these regulatory regions, even when physical distances change significantly due to genomic rearrangements.
By comparing 314 genomes from 284 different plant species-including many agricultural crops and their wild relatives collected from botanical gardens and herbaria-scientists identified more than 2.3 million of these conserved noncoding sequences (called CNSs). Some of them date back to before the split between flowering plants (angiosperms) and their flowerless ancestors, more than 400 million years ago.The most surprising thing is that these ancient sequences have not only survived: they serve as the basis for new regulations. When genes duplicate – something common in plants to allow growth and adaptation – parts of these ancient CNSs are modified and gain new functions, helping to explain how plants evolved such complex and diverse genomes.
To confirm that these regions really matter, the researchers genetically edited some of them and saw that altering them affects the normal development of the plant, proving their essential role.
This discovery opens a new window to understand the evolution of life over hundreds of millions of years. It shows that despite all the drastic changes in plant genomes, there is a deep order that persists. Furthermore, it creates a complete atlas of these ancient regulatory sequences, which can be used to improve crop plants – for example, tweaking genes to make them more resistant to drought, pests or food shortages, more precisely and efficiently.
In short, what appeared to be “junk” or random in plant DNA was, in fact, a hidden treasure trove of evolutionary instructions spanning the ages. Scientists are excited: It’s like finding an ancient manual that still works perfectly today, revealing secrets about how plant life became so varied and resilient on our planet.
Published in 03/13/2026 09h39
Text adapted by AI (Grok) and translated via Google API in the English version. Images from public image libraries or credits in the caption. Information about DOI, author and institution can be found in the body of the article.
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