Abstract Detail

Botany 2015 Colloquium: Phylogenomics and the 1000 plants (1KP) initiative 

Li, Zheng [1], Barker, Michael Shane [1].

Paleopolyploidy and the evolution of green plants.

Polyploidy, or whole genome duplication (WGD), is considered one of the most important forces in vascular plant evolution. Recent genomic analysis suggest flowering plant genomes are highly dynamic and experienced multiple rounds of paleopolyploidies. It has been proposed that ancient WGDs may drive major diversification events in angiosperms. Although paleopolyploidy is well-established in flowering plants, paleopolyploidy has not been studied as extensively in other clades of the green plant phylogeny. To further investigate the role of paleopolyploidy in the evolution of green plants, we combined 1455 transcriptomes from the 1KP project with data from nearly 200 other species to pinpoint paleopolyploidy across the green plant phylogeny. Our gene age distribution analyses show that paleopolyploidy occurs in most of the green plant lineages. We also used a new algorithm, Multi-Species Paleopolyploidy Search (MSPS), to identify shared ancient WGDs in a phylogenetic context. Our analyses uncover the paleopolyploidy history of some major green plant lineages such as ferns, lycophytes, and green algae. The current phylogenetic placement of ancient WGDs also provide the most complete records of paleopolyploidy in the evolutionary history of green plants. Our results will provide useful information for future studies on gene and gene family evolution, genome size variation and chromosomal evolution during the diversification of green plants.

1 - University Of Arizona, Department Of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, P.O. Box 210088, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA

Keywords:
Polyploidy
genomics
Evolution.

Presentation Type: Colloquium Presentations
Session: C1
Location: Salon 4/The Shaw Conference Centre
Date: Monday, July 27th, 2015
Time: 9:30 AM
Number: C1007
Abstract ID:1257
Candidate for Awards:None