Scientific Name	Physcomitrella patens
Common Name	Physcomitrella patens subsp. patens; Physcomitrium patens;
Taxonomy ID	3218
Lineage	cellular organisms > Viridiplantae > Streptophyta > Streptophytina > Embryophyta > Bryophyta > Bryophytina > Bryopsida > Funariidae > Funariales > Funariaceae > Physcomitrella
External Links	NCBI; EBI; JGI; PLAZA; Specialized Database
Representative Assembly	V1.1	GCF_000002425.3	DNA GFF RNA Protein

Description:

Physcomitrella patens, the spreading earthmoss, is a moss (bryophyte) used as a model organism for studies on plant evolution, development and physiology. As a non-seed plant, Physcomitrella patens belongs to the phylum Bryophyta. It exhibits a short life cycle which is predominantly gametophytic with a reduced sporophytic generation. It is being used as an experimental organism for reverse genetic studies which is made easier due to its dominant haploid phase and highly efficient homologous recombination as compared to other land plants.P. patens has a genome size of about 511 Mb distributed over 27 chromosomes (Schween et al. 2003 Plant Biol 5:50-58). The complete genome has been sequenced by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE). Having the whole genome sequence available helps bioinformatics comparison and plant functional genomics. Because of the phylogenetic position of P. patens in the plant kingdom, it can be efficiently used to understand plant evolution, in particular genome evolution.