Journal Article

Ancestral polyploidy in seed plants and angiosperms

Schlarbaum, Scott E., Clifton, Sandra W., Soltis, Pamela S., Leebens-Mack, Jim, Soltis, Douglas E., Tomsho, Lynn P., Landherr, Lena, Liang, Haiying, Schuster, Stephan C., Hu, Yi, Chanderbali, André S., Wickett, Norman J., Ma, Hong, Jiao, Yuannian, Ayyampalayam, Saravanaraj, Ralph, Paula E., dePamphilis, Claude W.

2011

Overview

Double dealing in the plant genome Gene and genome duplications are major factors in plant evolution. A high-resolution phylogenomic analysis of genes from sequenced genomes and more than 12.6 million expressed-sequence tags from pivotal gymnosperm and basal angiosperm species has identified two ancient whole-genome duplications. One occurred in the common ancestor of extant seed plants and the other in the common ancestor of the angiosperms. Whole-genome duplication (WGD), or polyploidy, followed by gene loss and diploidization has long been recognized as an important evolutionary force in animals, fungi and other organisms 1 , 2 , 3 , especially plants. The success of angiosperms has been attributed, in part, to innovations associated with gene or whole-genome duplications 4 , 5 , 6 , but evidence for proposed ancient genome duplications pre-dating the divergence of monocots and eudicots remains equivocal in analyses of conserved gene order. Here we use comprehensive phylogenomic analyses of sequenced plant genomes and more than 12.6 million new expressed-sequence-tag sequences from phylogenetically pivotal lineages to elucidate two groups of ancient gene duplications—one in the common ancestor of extant seed plants and the other in the common ancestor of extant angiosperms. Gene duplication events were intensely concentrated around 319 and 192 million years ago, implicating two WGDs in ancestral lineages shortly before the diversification of extant seed plants and extant angiosperms, respectively. Significantly, these ancestral WGDs resulted in the diversification of regulatory genes important to seed and flower development, suggesting that they were involved in major innovations that ultimately contributed to the rise and eventual dominance of seed plants and angiosperms.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group
• Subject: 631/181/757 / 631/449/2491/742 / 631/449/2653 / Agronomy. Soil science and plant productions / Angiosperms / Biological and medical sciences / Confidence intervals / Evolution / Evolution, Molecular / Flowers & plants / Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology / Generalities. Genetics. Plant material / Genes / Genetic aspects / Genetics and breeding of economic plants / Genome, Plant - genetics / Genomes / Genomics / Humanities and Social Sciences / Innovations / letter / Magnoliopsida - classification / Magnoliopsida - genetics / multidisciplinary / Natural history / Optimization algorithms / Origin, evolution, domestication / Phylogeny / Plant material / Polyploidy / Science / Science (multidisciplinary) / Trees