An Evolutionarily Conserved Abscisic Acid Signaling Pathway Regulates Dormancy in the Liverwort Marchantia polymorpha (Current Biology)

Eklund et al. show that in the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha, abscisic acid promotes dormancy in vegetative propagules known as gemmae. Their results indicate that an ABA signaling pathway, including orthologs of ABI1 and ABI3, operates locally in the gemmae themselves and likely acts in response to a long-range dormancy signal.