Blue light regulates many aspects of plant development.
These findings lead us to conclude that cryptochromes, which were first identified in plants, are a diverse family of photoreceptors throughout the plant and animal kingdoms. Isolation of cryptochromes from various species will be necessary if we are to understand the evolutionary history of this ubiquitous photoreceptor. In addition, only the functions of the Arabidopsis CRY1 and CRY2 genes are known. In order to establish the evolutionary link between algae and ferns, we attempted to isolate cryptochrome sequences from a bryophyte. Here we report the identification of a cryptochrome homologue from the moss Physcomitrella patens .