Is post-polyploidization diploidization the key to the evolutionary success of angiosperms?

By S. Dodsworth, Mark W. Chase, A. Leitch. 2016

156 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Advances in recent years have revolutionized our understanding of both the context and occurrence of polyploidy in plants. Molecular phylogenetics has vastly improved our understanding of plant relationships, enabling us to better understand trait and character evolution, including chromosome number changes. This, in turn, has allowed us to appreciate better the frequent occurrence and extent of polyploidy throughout the history of angiosperms, despite the occurrence of low chromosome numbers in some groups, such as in Arabidopsis (A. thaliana was the first plant genome to be sequenced and assembled). In tandem with an enhanced appreciation of phylogenetic relationships, the accumulation of genomic data has led to the conclusion that all angiosperms are palaeopolyploids, together with better estimates of the frequency and type of polyploidy in different angiosperm lineages. The focus therefore becomes when a lineage last underwent polyploidization, rather than simply whether a plant is ‘diploid’ or ‘polyploid’. This legacy of past polyploidization in plants is masked by large-scale genome reorganization involving repetitive DNA loss, chromosome rearrangements (including fusions and fissions) and complex patterns of gene loss, a set of processes that are collectively termed ‘diploidization’. We argue here that it is the diploidization process that is responsible for the ‘lag phase’ between polyploidization events and lineage diversification. If so, diploidization is important in determining chromosome structure and gene content, and has therefore made a significant contribution to the evolutionary success of flowering plants. © 2015 The Authors. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The Linnean Society of London, Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 2015, ●●, ●●–●●.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2d3b9e660a89f0d37e05e70aa4599707ab99493e

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In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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Citations in the corpus

Polyploidy, the Nucleotype, and Novelty: The Impact of Genome Doubling on the Biology of the Cell (2019, background): “Although much of the reduction in genome size could be due to natural selection operating over time as part of the diploidization process (e.g., Dodsworth et al. 2016), Leitch and Bennett (2004) also note that reduction could be an immediate effect of recombination.”
The scaling of genome size and cell size limits maximum rates of photosynthesis with implications for ecological strategies (2019, background): “…duplications (Clark et al. 2016), angiosperm genomes readily rediploidize after polyploidization such that genome size and ploidy are positively correlated only for narrowly defined phylogenetic groups (i.e. within genera and families, Figure 5; Leitch and Bennett 2004; Dodsworth et al. 2016).”
Impacts of Nitrogen and Phosphorus: From Genomes to Natural Ecosystems and Agriculture (2017, background): “…many groups of eukaryotes are characterized by relatively small genomes, arising from genome-streamlining processes such as unequal and illegitimate recombination and chromosomal rearrangements triggered following polyploidy (Leitch and Bennett, 2004; Hessen et al., 2010; Dodsworth et al., 2016).”