Josep A. Rossello, researcher at the Botanical Garden-ICBiBE / (Cavanilles Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology), has participated in the international research that has for the first time sequenced the genome of a gymnosperm plant, specifically the conifer Picea abies. This finding on the molecular structure of a conifer, which has just been published in Nature magazine, provides valuable data for the evolutionary study of seed plants and may have important applications in the coniferous forest industry.
The group has dominated coniferous forests in temperate regions for over 200 million years and are now one of the most important plant groups of ecological and economic relevance. Ecological, because the most important places in the Northern Hemisphere and the Mediterranean are diverse ecosystems dominated by conifers (firs, cedars, cypresses, pines, ...) and economic, because these species, their characteristics (growth rapid and large size, mostly) are crops used for timber harvesting.
Josep A. Rosselló, group director of Plant Biodiversity and Evolution of the Botanical Garden ICBiBE / (Cavanilles Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology) from the University of Valencia, and scientific director of the Carl Faust Foundation has participated in the international research that has sequenced for the first time the genome of a gymnosperm (naked seed plant), specifically the conifer Picea abies. The work is multidisciplinary and is led by Stefan Jansson from Umeå Plant Science Centre in Sweden.
The analyzes show that the number of genes in Picea abies (28,354) and by extension in the trees primitive gymnosperms, is very similar to Arabidopsis thaliana, angiosperms (flowering plant) model in the vegetable search that shows a 100 times smaller genome. This and other research results make the genome of Picea abies a very valid tool for the investigation, which opens doors to new challenges in the evolutionary study of vegetative and reproductive structures responsible for the explosion of diversity of angiosperms in the Cretaceous.
The data obtained indicate that conifers have low gene density and that the large size of the genome that have the conifers (and many gymnosperms in general) is not due to a recent duplication of the whole genome. In contrast, the large genomes of gymnosperms appears to have been originated by a slow and progressive accumulation of movable elements (LTR-transposons) probably due to the lack of an efficient mechanism for their removal from the genome. Comparing the genome of P. abies to the genomes of a pine (Pinus sylvestris), a fir (Abies sibirica), juniper (Juniperus communis), yew (Taxus baccata) and gnetacia (Gnetum gnemon) has revealed that the diversity of mobile elements is shared among all current gymnosperms. The activity of the mobile elements of the genome has been instrumental in the large size of the introns (more than 10 kb) having the genes. Most likely, the low frequency of genomic rearrangements and lack of duplication of the entire genome has contributed to a highly conserved genome structure in conifers.
The University of Valencia has brought experience in the field of molecular evolution of ribosomal DNA and the genome size determination, aspects that complement the work of the other groups involved. This research is the first step in a series of ongoing work with the University of Umeå genomic diversity gymnosperms, in particular on the structure and evolution of gymnosperms attachment to groups with molecular cytogenetic techniques.
Last update: 3 de june de 2013 10:01.
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