bioRxiv · 10.1101/217463
Overlooked polyploidies in lycophytes generalize their roles during the evolution of vascular plants
Abstract
Seed plants and lycophytes constitute the extant vascular plants. As a model lycophyte, Selaginalla moellendroffii was deciphered its genome, previously proposed to have avoided polyploidies, as key events contributing to the origination and fast expansion of seed plants. Here, using a gold-standard streamline recently proposed to deconvolute complex genomes, we reanalyzed the S. moellendroffii genome. To our surprise, we found clear evidence of multiple paleo-polyploidies, with one being recent (~ 13-15 millions of years ago or Mya), another one occurring about ~125-142 Mya, during the evolution of lycophytes, and at least 2 or 3 events being more ancient. Besides, comparison of reconstructed ancestral genomes of lycophytes and angiosperms shows that lycophytes were likely much more affected by paleo-polyploidies than seed plants. The present analysis here provides clear and solid evidence that polyploidies have contributed the successful establishment of all vascular plants on earth.
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Wang, J., Yu, J., Sun, P., Li, C., Song, X., Lei, T., Li, Y., Yuan, J., Sun, S., Ding, H., Duan, X., Shen, S., Shen, Y., Li, J., Meng, F., Xie, Y., Hou, Y., Zhang, J., Zhang, X., Wang, X.. 2017-11-10. Overlooked polyploidies in lycophytes generalize their roles during the evolution of vascular plants. https://doi.org/10.1101/217463
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