Plant cytochrome P450s from moss to poplar

This review represents the first attempt to define the origins of the major P450-containing pathways in plants. Comparative genomics with five complete P450 gene sets from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii with 39 sequences, Physcomitrella patens (moss) with 71 sequences, rice with 356 sequences, Arabidopsis with 246 sequences and Populus with 312 sequences is used to estimate how old each gene family is and to identify the most ancient P450s and their pathways. The pathways included are the phenylpropanoid and lignin pathways, the gibberellin pathway, the oxylipin/jasmonate pathway, the basic flavonoid pathway, the brassinosteroid pathway, the abscisic acid pathway and the cutin synthesis pathway. An effort is made to identify at least some examples of P450s that have emerged at many different levels of the evolutionary bush, from the base to the tips.