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Prof. Dr. Sabine Zachgo with the liverwort in the Botany research group's laboratory (Image: Vanessa von Kortzfleisch | Osnabrück University)

From the Botanical Garden to the centre of top-level research: The amazing career of an Osnabrück liverwort

The liverwort Marchantia polymorpha is found all over the world. By comparing specimens from different regions, scientists have the opportunity to obtain valuable information on how plants adapt to very different environmental conditions. As part of a study recently published in the renowned scientific journal ‘Nature Genetics’, an international team has now decoded the genetic material of representatives from over one hundred ecotypes of the liverwort. Among them: Prof. Dr. Sabine Zachgo - and Marchantia plants from Osnabrück University’s Botanical Garden.

12.03.2025

There are a number of impressive plants to discover in the Botanical Garden at Osnabrück University. In view of this enormous variety, most visitors are unlikely to pay much attention to the inconspicuous liverwort Marchantia polymorpha. Prof. Dr. Sabine Zachgo, head of the Botany research group and director of the Botanical Garden, is quite different: she recognised great potential for her research in the plant, which is only a few centimetres tall. This is because it is a model organism with a long history in botany, which has experienced a veritable renaissance in the field of plant genetics in recent decades.

From the Botanical Garden to the laboratory  

Available liverworts were initially not very prolific, which is why the team from the botany group took some plants from the Botanical Garden into the laboratory and used them to establish sterile cultures. Since then, the offspring of these plants have been used as study objects to investigate their development and genetic adaptations to different environmental conditions. And this ultimately led to them recently becoming part of a major research project in which scientists from North America, Europe and Asia have joined forces to decode the so-called ‘pan-genome’ of Marchantia polymorpha.

Impressive morphological diversity: different specimens of the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha (Image: David J. Hoey)

The genetic diversity of Marchantia polymorpha

The term pan-genome refers to the fact that not just the genetic material of a specific individual from a single site is analysed, but the genetic material of a whole series of specimens from populations with different origins. The aim is to obtain as accurate a picture as possible of the entire genetic diversity of a species from different locations. In the case of the liverwort, this meant that the researchers carried out genetic analyses on representatives of a total of 133 different ecotypes. One of these ecotypes bears the evocative name ‘BoGa’ - a tribute to its place of growth, the Botanical Garden in Osnabrück.

The team published the results of their extensive analyses in the prestigious journal ‘Nature Genetics’. In future, they will serve as a basis for the scientific community to find out more about the genetic adaptations of the different ecotypes of Marchantia polymorpha to their respective habitats.

A modest plant’s amazing journey

The modest liverwort plants from Osnabrück have made an amazing journey in just a few years: From the wayside in the Botanical Garden to the laboratory of the botany research group and thus directly into the focus of cutting-edge research – with the result that they now represent an ecotype in their species' pan-genome.

Sabine Zachgo is delighted with the career of this Osnabrück liverwort. ‘The Marchantia BoGa ecotype is also being used in the DFG priority programme ‘MAdLand’ (Molecular Adaptation to Land: plant evolution to change), in which more than twenty plant research teams are involved,’ she explains. ’The aim is to understand how land plants in the course of evolution have adapted to highly topical processes, such as increasingly frequent drought and flooding stress.’

See the publication:

Beaulieu C.; Libourel, C.; Mbadinge Zamar, D. L (…) Zachgo, S. (…) Bonhomme, M. & Delaux, P.-M. (2025): The Marchantia polymorpha pangenome reveals ancient mechanisms of plant adaptation to the environment. Nature Genetics.