Mosses may appear simple, but they’re far from fragile. They thrive in some of the harshest places on Earth — Antarctica, arid deserts, high mountain peaks and more.
“We’ve long wondered about the molecular mechanisms that allow moss to endure such extreme conditions,” says Tomomichi Fujita, a plant physiologist at Hokkaido University in Japan.
Fujita and his colleagues may now have part of the answer. They grew spreading earthmoss (Physcomitrium patens) for nearly eight weeks under artificial gravity up to 10 times stronger than that of Earth. Surprisingly, the intense gravity boosted chloroplast size, shoot growth and photosynthesis rates, the researchers report July 16 in Science Advances.