A new sunflower family tree used skimmed genomes to increase the number of species sampled, revealing that flower symmetry evolved multiple times independently, a process called convergent evolution, among the members of this large plant family.
The sunflower family tree revealed that flower symmetry evolved multiple times independently, a process called convergent evolution, among the members of this large plant family, according to a new analysis. The research team, led by a Penn State biologist, resolved more of the finer branches of the family tree, providing insight into how the sunflower family -- which includes asters, daisies and food crops like lettuce and artichoke -- evolved.
In recent years, many family trees for a group of related species have been built by extensively using transcriptomes, which are the genetic sequences of essentially all of the genes expressed by a species, the researchers explained. Transcriptomes are easier to acquire than high-quality whole-genome sequences for a species but are still difficult and costly to prepare and require fresh plant samples.
"Previous versions of the sunflower family tree had established the relationships among most of the subfamilies and many tribes, which are equivalent to the main branches of a tree," Ma said."With our increased sample size, we were able to resolve more of the smaller branches and twigs at the subtribe and genus level.
In addition to Ma, the research team includes Guojin Zhang at Penn State; Junbo Yang, Jie Cai, Zhi-Rong Zhang and Lian-Ming Gao at the Kunming Institute of Botany in Kunming, China; Caifei Zhang at the Wuhan Botanical Garden and Sino-Africa Joint Research Centre in Wuhan, China; Bohan Jiao and Tiangang Gao at the State Key Laboratory of Plant Diversity and Specialty Crops in Beijing, China; and Jose L. Panero at the University of Texas, Austin.
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