A new study reports the discovery of over 2.3 million conserved non-coding regulatory DNA sequences (CNSs) across 314 plant genomes from 284 species, showing that regulatory DNA in plants is deeply conserved over evolutionary time.

These CNSs hold promise for improving crop breeding, including drought tolerance and food security, while also offering broad insights into how regulatory elements emerge, persist, and diversify over geological timescales.

Three guiding patterns emerge for CNS evolution in plants: gene order on chromosomes remains conserved even as physical spacing changes; CNSs often connect to different genes after genome rearrangements; and ancient CNSs survive gene duplications to shape genome and gene family evolution.

Many CNSs were previously undetected, and experiments reveal that these CNSs are essential for developmental functions in plants.

The Conservatory project provides a comprehensive atlas of regulatory conservation across plants, including crops and their wild ancestors, helping researchers study how regulatory DNA is preserved or reshaped during evolution.

Some CNSs originate more than 400 million years ago, predating the split between flowering and non-flowering plants, indicating ancient regulatory elements persist in modern species.

Researchers used a novel computational tool called Conservatory to identify CNSs by analyzing gene cluster arrangements and their evolutionary patterns across hundreds of plant genomes.