Geographic patterns of genetic variation in wild species reflect the interplay of ecological and evolutionary processes. We assessed genetic variation in three genomes across four North American diploid strawberry taxa, with special emphasis on the gynodioecious Fragaria vesca subsp. bracteata (A.Heller) Staudt. Specifically, we sequenced one chloroplast (rpoC2) and two...
Gynodioecy, the coexistence of females and hermaphrodites, occurs in 20% of angiosperm families and often enables transitions between hermaphroditism and dioecy. Clarifying mechanisms of sex determination in gynodioecious species can thus illuminate sexual system evolution. Genetic determination of gynodioecy, however, can be complex and is not fully characterized in any...
Whole-genome duplications are radical evolutionary events that have driven speciation and adaptation in many taxa. Higher-order
polyploids have complex histories often including interspecific hybridization and dynamic genomic changes. This chromosomal
reshuffling is poorly understood for most polyploid species, despite their evolutionary and agricultural importance, due to the
challenge of distinguishing...
Despite knowledge that concerted evolution of high-copy loci is often imperfect,
studies that investigate the extent of intragenomic polymorphisms and comparisons
across a large number of species are rarely made. We present a bioinformatic pipeline
for characterizing polymorphisms within an individual among copies of a high-copy
locus. Results are presented...
The cultivated strawberry, Fragaria Xananassa, is one of the youngest domesticated plants. Its 18th century origin via hybridization in Europe between the North American F. virginiana and the South American F. chiloensis was documented by the botanist Antoine Nicolas Duchesne. His 1766 “Natural History of Strawberries” is an extraordinary work...
Eucalypts are the world’s most widely planted hardwood trees. Their outstanding diversity, adaptability and growth have
made them a global renewable resource of fibre and energy. We sequenced and assembled >94% of the 640-megabase
genome of Eucalyptus grandis. Of 36,376 predicted protein-coding genes, 34% occur in tandem duplications, the largest...
PREMISE OF THE STUDY: Hyb-Seq, the combination of target enrichment and genome skimming
allows simultaneous data collection for low-copy nuclear genes and high-copy genomic targets
for plant systematics and evolution studies.
METHODS AND RESULTS: Genome and transcriptome assemblies for milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)
were utilized to design enrichment probes for 3385...
BACKGROUND: As it becomes increasingly possible to obtain DNA sequences of orthologous genes from diverse sets
of taxa, species trees are frequently being inferred from multilocus data. However, the behavior of many methods for
performing this inference has remained largely unexplored. Some methods have been proven to be consistent given...
Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) of DNA from the plastid to the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes of higher plants is a common
phenomenon; however, plastid genomes (plastomes) are highly conserved and have generally been regarded as impervious to HGT.
We sequenced the 158 kb plastome and the 690 kb mitochondrial genome...
Gynodioecy is a sexual system wherein females coexist with hermaphrodites. It is of interest
not only because male-sterile plants are advantageous in plant breeding but also because it can be a crucial
step in the evolutionary transition to entirely separate sexes (dioecy) from a hermaphroditic ancestor. The
gynodioecious diploid wild...