The evolutionary history of the Arabidopsis lyrata complex: a hybrid in the amphi-Beringian area closes a large distribution gap and builds up a genetic barrier

Polyploid evolution and Pleistocene glacial cycles: A case study from the alpine primrose Primula marginata (Primulaceae)

Background

Recent studies highlighted the role of Pleistocene climatic cycles in polyploid speciation and of southern Alpine refugia as reservoirs of diversity during glacial maxima. The polyploid Primula marginata, endemic to the southwestern Alps, includes both hexaploid and dodecaploid cytotypes that show no ecological or morphological differences. We used flow cytometry to determine variation and geographic distribution of cytotypes within and between populations and analyses of chloroplast (cp) and nuclear ribosomal (nr) DNA sequences from the Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) region to infer the evolutionary history of the two cytotypes and the auto- vs. allopolyploid origin of dodecaploid populations.

Results

We did not detect any intermediate cytotypes or variation of ploidy levels within populations. Hexaploids occur in the western and dodecaploids in the eastern part of the distributional range, respectively. The cpDNA and nrDNA topologies are in conflict, for the former supports shared ancestry between P. marginata and P. latifolia, while the latter implies common origins between at least some ITS clones of P. marginata and P. allionii.

Conclusions

Our results suggest an initial episode of chloroplast capture involving ancestral lineages of P. latifolia and P. marginata, followed by polyploidization between P. marginata-like and P. allionii-like lineages in a southern refugium of the Maritime Alps. The higher proportion of ITS polymorphisms in dodecaploid than in hexaploid accessions of P. marginata and higher total nucleotide diversity of ITS clones in dodecaploid vs. hexaploid individuals sequences are congruent with the allopolyploid hypothesis of dodecaploid origin.

Signals of speciation within Arabidopsis thaliana in comparison with its relatives

The species within the now well-defined Arabidopsis genus provide biological materials suitable to investigate speciation and the development of reproductive isolation barriers between related species. Even within the model species A. thaliana, genetic differentiation between populations due to environmental adaptation or demographic history can lead to cases where hybrids between accessions are non-viable. Experimental evidence supports the importance of genome duplications and genetic epistatic interactions in the occurrence of reproductive isolation. Other examples of adaptation to specific environments can be found in Arabidopsis relatives where hybridization and chromosome doubling lead to new amphidiploid species. Molecular signals of speciation found in the Arabidopsis genus should provide a better understanding of speciation processes in plants from a genetic, molecular and evolutionary perspective.

Population fragmentation causes randomly fixed genotypes in populations of Arabidopsis kamchatica in the Japanese Archipelago

Populations of arctic alpine plants likely disappeared and re-colonised several times at the southern edge of their distributions during glacial and interglacial cycles throughout the Quaternary. Range shift and population fragmentation after a glacial period would affect the genetic structure of such plants in southernmost populations. We aimed to elucidate how climatic oscillations influenced the population subsistence of alpine plants in the Japanese Archipelago as one of the southernmost populations, by inferring the genetic structure of Arabidopsis kamchatica subsp. kamchatica and the intraspecific littoral taxon, subsp. kawasakiana. We identified genotypes based on the haplotypes of five nuclear genes and two chloroplast DNA spacers for 164 individuals from 24 populations. Most populations harboured only one private genotype, whereas few polymorphisms were found in each population. Two genetic genealogies were found, suggesting that northern Japanese populations of alpine subsp. kamchatica, subsp. kawasakiana and the northerly subsp. kamchatica in eastern Russia and Alaska clustered and differentiated from populations in central Honshu, western Japan and Taiwan. During climatic oscillations, the genetic structure of extant southernmost populations would have been shaped by strong genetic drift under population fragmentation and randomly fixed to a single genotype among their ancestral polymorphisms.

Nuclear and chloroplast DNA phylogeography reveals vicariance among European populations of the model species for the study of metal tolerance, Arabidopsis halleri (Brassicaceae)

Arabidopsis halleri is a pseudometallophyte involved in numerous molecular studies of the adaptation to anthropogenic metal stress. In order to test the representativeness of genetic accessions commonly used in these studies, we investigated the A. halleri population genetic structure in Europe. Microsatellite and nucleotide polymorphisms from the nuclear and chloroplast genomes, respectively, were used to genotype 65 populations scattered over Europe. The large-scale population structure was characterized by a significant phylogeographic signal between two major genetic units. The localization of the phylogeographic break was assumed to result from vicariance between large populations isolated in southern and central Europe, on either side of ice sheets covering the Alps during the Quaternary ice ages. Genetic isolation was shown to be maintained in western Europe by the high summits of the Alps, whereas admixture was detected in the Carpathians. Considering the phylogeographic literature, our results suggest a distinct phylogeographic pattern for European species occurring in both mountain and lowland habitats. Considering the evolution of metal adaptation in A. halleri, it appears that recent adaptations to anthropogenic metal stress that have occurred within either phylogeographic unit should be regarded as independent events that potentially have involved the evolution of a variety of genetic mechanisms.

Interspecific and interploidal gene flow in Central European Arabidopsis (Brassicaceae)

BACKGROUND

Effects of polyploidisation on gene flow between natural populations are little known. Central European diploid and tetraploid populations of Arabidopsis arenosa and A. lyrata are here used to study interspecific and interploidal gene flow, using a combination of nuclear and plastid markers.

RESULTS

Ploidal levels were confirmed by flow cytometry. Network analyses clearly separated diploids according to species. Tetraploids and diploids were highly intermingled within species, and some tetraploids intermingled with the other species, as well. Isolation with migration analyses suggested interspecific introgression from tetraploid A. arenosa to tetraploid A. lyrata and vice versa, and some interploidal gene flow, which was unidirectional from diploid to tetraploid in A. arenosa and bidirectional in A. lyrata.

CONCLUSIONS

Interspecific genetic isolation at diploid level combined with introgression at tetraploid level indicates that polyploidy may buffer against negative consequences of interspecific hybridisation. The role of introgression in polyploid systems may, however, differ between plant species, and even within the small genus Arabidopsis, we find very different evolutionary fates when it comes to introgression.

Plant sexual reproduction during climate change: gene function in natura studied by ecological and evolutionary systems biology

BACKGROUND

It is essential to understand and predict the effects of changing environments on plants. This review focuses on the sexual reproduction of plants, as previous studies have suggested that this trait is particularly vulnerable to climate change, and because a number of ecologically and evolutionarily relevant genes have been identified.

SCOPE

It is proposed that studying gene functions in naturally fluctuating conditions, or gene functions in natura, is important to predict responses to changing environments. First, we discuss flowering time, an extensively studied example of phenotypic plasticity. The quantitative approaches of ecological and evolutionary systems biology have been used to analyse the expression of a key flowering gene, FLC, of Arabidopsis halleri in naturally fluctuating environments. Modelling showed that FLC acts as a quantitative tracer of the temperature over the preceding 6 weeks. The predictions of this model were verified experimentally, confirming its applicability to future climate changes. Second, the evolution of self-compatibility as exemplifying an evolutionary response is discussed. Evolutionary genomic and functional analyses have indicated that A. thaliana became self-compatible via a loss-of-function mutation in the male specificity gene, SCR/SP11. Self-compatibility evolved during glacial-interglacial cycles, suggesting its association with mate limitation during migration. Although the evolution of self-compatibility may confer short-term advantages, it is predicted to increase the risk of extinction in the long term because loss-of-function mutations are virtually irreversible.

CONCLUSIONS

Recent studies of FLC and SCR have identified gene functions in natura that are unlikely to be found in laboratory experiments. The significance of epigenetic changes and the study of non-model species with next-generation DNA sequencers is also discussed.

Arabidopsis hybrid speciation processes

The genus Arabidopsis provides a unique opportunity to study fundamental biological questions in plant sciences using the diploid model species Arabidopsis thaliana and Arabidopsis lyrata. However, only a few studies have focused on introgression and hybrid speciation in Arabidopsis, although polyploidy is a common phenomenon within this genus. More recently, there is growing evidence of significant gene flow between the various Arabidopsis species. So far, we know Arabidopsis suecica and Arabidopsis kamchatica as fully stabilized allopolyploid species. Both species evolved during Pleistocene glaciation and deglaciation cycles in Fennoscandinavia and the amphi-Beringian region, respectively. These hybrid studies were conducted either on a phylogeographic scale or reconstructed experimentally in the laboratory. In our study we focus at a regional and population level. Our research area is located in the foothills of the eastern Austrian Alps, where two Arabidopsis species, Arabidopsis arenosa and A. lyrata ssp. petraea, are sympatrically distributed. Our hypothesis of genetic introgression, migration, and adaptation to the changing environment during the Pleistocene has been confirmed: We observed significant, mainly unidirectional gene flow between the two species, which has given rise to the tetraploid A. lyrata. This cytotype was able to escape from the narrow ecological niche occupied by diploid A. lyrata ssp. petraea on limestone outcrops by migrating northward into siliceous areas, leaving behind a trail of genetic differentiation.

A next-generation sequencing method for overcoming the multiple gene copy problem in polyploid phylogenetics, applied to Poa grasses

BACKGROUND

Polyploidy is important from a phylogenetic perspective because of its immense past impact on evolution and its potential future impact on diversification, survival and adaptation, especially in plants. Molecular population genetics studies of polyploid organisms have been difficult because of problems in sequencing multiple-copy nuclear genes using Sanger sequencing. This paper describes a method for sequencing a barcoded mixture of targeted gene regions using next-generation sequencing methods to overcome these problems.

RESULTS

Using 64 3-bp barcodes, we successfully sequenced three chloroplast and two nuclear gene regions (each of which contained two gene copies with up to two alleles per individual) in a total of 60 individuals across 11 species of Australian Poa grasses. This method had high replicability, a low sequencing error rate (after appropriate quality control) and a low rate of missing data. Eighty-eight percent of the 320 gene/individual combinations produced sequence reads, and >80% of individuals produced sufficient reads to detect all four possible nuclear alleles of the homeologous nuclear loci with 95% probability.We applied this method to a group of sympatric Australian alpine Poa species, which we discovered to share an allopolyploid ancestor with a group of American Poa species. All markers revealed extensive allele sharing among the Australian species and so we recommend that the current taxonomy be re-examined. We also detected hypermutation in the trnH-psbA marker, suggesting it should not be used as a land plant barcode region. Some markers indicated differentiation between Tasmanian and mainland samples. Significant positive spatial genetic structure was detected at <100 km with chloroplast but not nuclear markers, which may be a result of restricted seed flow and long-distance pollen flow in this wind-pollinated group.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results demonstrate that 454 sequencing of barcoded amplicon mixtures can be used to reliably sample all alleles of homeologous loci in polyploid species and successfully investigate phylogenetic relationships among species, as well as to investigate phylogeographic hypotheses. This next-generation sequencing method is more affordable than and at least as reliable as bacterial cloning. It could be applied to any experiment involving sequencing of amplicon mixtures.

Multilocus analysis of genetic divergence between outcrossing Arabidopsis species: evidence of genome-wide admixture

• Outcrossing Arabidopsis species that diverged from their inbreeding relative Arabidopsis thaliana 5 million yr ago and display a biogeographical pattern of interspecific sympatry vs intraspecific allopatry provides an ideal model for studying impacts of gene introgression and polyploidization on species diversification. • Flow cytometry analyses detected ploidy polymorphisms of 2× and 4× in Arabidopsis lyrata ssp. kamchatica of Taiwan. Genomic divergence between species/subspecies was estimated based on 98 randomly chosen nuclear genes. Multilocus analyses revealed a mosaic genome in diploid A. l. kamchatica composed of Arabidopsis halleri-like and A. lyrata-like alleles. • Coalescent analyses suggest that the segregation of ancestral polymorphisms alone cannot explain the high inconsistency between gene trees across loci, and that gene introgression via diploid A. l. kamchatica likely distorts the molecular phylogenies of Arabidopsis species. However, not all genes migrated across species freely. Gene ontology analyses suggested that some nonmigrating genes were constrained by natural selection. • High levels of estimated ancestral polymorphisms between A. halleri and A. lyrata suggest that gene flow between these species has not completely ceased since their initial isolation. Polymorphism data of extant populations also imply recent gene flow between the species. Our study reveals that interspecific gene flow affects the genome evolution in Arabidopsis.

Progress and Promise in using Arabidopsis to Study Adaptation, Divergence, and Speciation

Fundamental questions remain to be answered on how lineages split and new species form. The Arabidopsis genus, with several increasingly well characterized species closely related to the model system A. thaliana, provides a rare opportunity to address key questions in speciation research. Arabidopsis species, and in some cases populations within a species, vary considerably in their habitat preferences, adaptations to local environments, mating system, life history strategy, genome structure and chromosome number. These differences provide numerous open doors for understanding the role these factors play in population divergence and how they may cause barriers to arise among nascent species. Molecular tools available in A. thaliana are widely applicable to its relatives, and together with modern comparative genomic approaches they will provide new and increasingly mechanistic insights into the processes underpinning lineage divergence and speciation. We will discuss recent progress in understanding the molecular basis of local adaptation, reproductive isolation and genetic incompatibility, focusing on work utilizing the Arabidopsis genus, and will highlight several areas in which additional research will provide meaningful insights into adaptation and speciation processes in this genus.

Colonizing the American continent: Systematics of the genus Arabis in North America (Brassicaceae)

The circumscription of the genus Arabis underwent many and drastic changes within the past. Using DNA sequence information from the nuclear ribosomal RNA and parts of the plastid genome (trnL-trnLF), as well as a critical evaluation of herbarium material from East Asia and North America, we circumscribe the various Arabis taxa of North America. The American and East Asian Arabis species are closely related and, contrary to what was previously believed, they are not closely related to the Eurasian A. hirsuta. Using cpDNA, we found five North American lineages of Arabis with distinct distribution patterns, of which only the purple/red-flowered lineage consists of proven diploids that evolved directly from East Asian progenitors. All other four lineages evolved via ancient hybridization either on the Asian continent prior to migration to North America or showed significant evidence for hybridization and reticulation while diversifying on the American continent. We also provide the first evidence for the systematic circumscription of East Asian Arabis taxa, which together with the North American taxa, form one clade distantly related to European A. ciliata and Eurasian A. hirsuta. The findings also represent the first record of A. pycnocarpa for the floras of China, Japan, and Russian Far East.