Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Williams BP
PROVIDER: S-EPMC3786385 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Sep
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Williams Ben P BP Johnston Iain G IG Covshoff Sarah S Hibberd Julian M JM
eLife 20130928
C4 photosynthesis has independently evolved from the ancestral C3 pathway in at least 60 plant lineages, but, as with other complex traits, how it evolved is unclear. Here we show that the polyphyletic appearance of C4 photosynthesis is associated with diverse and flexible evolutionary paths that group into four major trajectories. We conducted a meta-analysis of 18 lineages containing species that use C3, C4, or intermediate C3-C4 forms of photosynthesis to parameterise a 16-dimensional phenoty ...[more]