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MBE Advance Access originally published online on February 23, 2008
Molecular Biology and Evolution 2008 25(6):1003-1006; doi:10.1093/molbev/msn052
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Letter

The Preferential Retention of Starch Synthesis Genes Reveals the Impact of Whole-Genome Duplication on Grass Evolution

Yufeng Wu*, Zhengge Zhu{dagger}, Ligeng Ma{ddagger} and Mingsheng Chen*

* State Key Laboratory of Plant Genomics, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
{dagger} College of Biology, Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China
{ddagger} National Institute of Biological Sciences, Beijing, China

E-mail: mschen{at}genetics.ac.cn

Accepted for publication February 15, 2008.

Gene duplication is a major force in evolution. Here, we analyzed the fate of duplicated genes following the ancient whole-genome duplication (WGD) in rice. Polyploidy-derived duplicated genes were found to be preferentially lost from one of each pair of duplicated chromosomal segments, suggesting that the asymmetric gene loss may result from transcriptome dominance of the ancestral allotetraploid genome. Genes involved in synthesis and catabolism of saccharides were found to be preferentially retained in rice, reflecting different trajectories of duplicated genes formed by polyploidy between rice and Arabidopsis. Further studies demonstrated all 3 catalyzing steps in the starch biosynthesis pathway have polyploidy-derived duplicated genes and one copy in each step forms a dominant pathway in the grain filling–stage rice. The new starch biosynthesis pathway reflects one aspect of the impact of WGD on grass evolution.

Key Words: genome duplication • genome evolution • comparative genomics

Franz Lang, Associate Editor


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