Norway spruce spatiotemporal programs of conifer reproductive development.

Spatiotemporal transcriptomics reveals key genes and pathways in Norway spruce reproductive development, highlighting the vegetative-to-reproductive transition and gene evolution.

• Why it matters: Understanding conifer reproductive development is crucial for forest ecology and conservation, yet remains poorly characterized due to complex genomes.
• What they did: Researchers created a detailed spatial transcriptomics atlas of 88 tissue sections from developing shoots at three time points, including mutant transition shoots, to study gene expression dynamics.
• The result: The study identified specific genes and pathways involved in reproductive organ formation, characterized the MADS-box gene DAL55, and clarified evolutionary links between gymnosperm and angiosperm YABBY genes, advancing knowledge of conifer reproductive biology.