Flanking regions of monomorphic microsatellite loci provide a new source of data for plant species-level phylogenetics
Identificadores
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12020/1227ISSN: 1055-7903
DOI: 10.1016/j.ympev.2009.07.024
Autor/es
Chatrou, Lars W; Escribano, Pilar; Viruel, María Ángeles; Maas, Jan W; Richardson, James E; [et al.]Fecha
2009-07-29Tipo de documento
articleÁrea/s de conocimiento
Biología Celular y MolecularMateria/s Unesco
2414 MicrobiologíaResumen
Well-resolved phylogenetic trees are essential for us to understand evolutionary processes at the level of
species. The degree of species-level resolution in the plant phylogenetic literature is poor, however, largely
due to the dearth of sufficiently variable molecular markers.
Unlike the common genic approach to marker development, we generated DNA sequences of monomorphic
nuclear microsatellite flanking regions in a phylogenetic study of Annona species (Annonaceae).
The resulting data showed no evidence of paralogy or allelic diversity that would confound attempts to
reconstruct the species tree. Microsatellite flanking regions are short, making them practical to use, yet
have astounding proportions of variable characters. They have 3.5- to 10-fold higher substitution rates
compared to two commonly used chloroplast markers, have no rate heterogeneity among nucleotide
positions, evolve in a clock-like fashion, and show no evidence of saturation. These advantages are offset
by the short length of the flanking regions, resulting in similar numbers of parsimony informative characters
to the chloroplast markers.
The neutral evolution and high variability of flanking regions, together with the wide availability of
monomorphic microsatellite loci in angiosperms, are useful qualities for species-level phylogenetics.
The general methodology we present here facilitates to find phylogenetic markers in groups where
microsatellites have been developed