Dataset Information

The Dynamics of Flower Development in Castanea sativa Mill.

ABSTRACT: The sweet chestnut tree (Castanea sativa Mill.) is one of the most significant Mediterranean tree species, being an important natural resource for the wood and fruit industries. It is a monoecious species, presenting unisexual male catkins and bisexual catkins, with the latter having distinct male and female flowers. Despite the importance of the sweet chestnut tree, little is known regarding the molecular mechanisms involved in the determination of sexual organ identity. Thus, the study of how the different flowers of C. sativa develop is fundamental to understand the reproductive success of this species and the impact of flower phenology on its productivity. In this study, a C. sativa de novo transcriptome was assembled and the homologous genes to those of the ABCDE model for floral organ identity were identified. Expression analysis showed that the C. sativa B- and C-class genes are differentially expressed in the male flowers and female flowers. Yeast two-hybrid analysis also suggested that changes in the canonical ABCDE protein-protein interactions may underlie the mechanisms necessary to the development of separate male and female flowers, as reported for the monoecious Fagaceae Quercus suber. The results here depicted constitute a step towards the understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in unisexual flower development in C. sativa, also suggesting that the ABCDE model for flower organ identity may be molecularly conserved in the predominantly monoecious Fagaceae family.

SUBMITTER: Alhinho AT

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8398726 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:A biocultural diversity approach integrates plant biology and germplasm dispersal processes with human cultural diversity. An increasing number of studies have identified cultural factors and ethnolinguistic barriers as the main drivers of the genetic diversity in crop plants. Little is known about how anthropogenic processes have affected the evolution of tree crops over the entire time scale of their interaction with humans. In Asia and the Mediterranean, common walnut (Juglans regia L.) and sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) have been economically and culturally important crops for millennia; there, in ancient times, they were invested with symbolic and religious significance. In this study, we detected a partial geographic congruence between the ethno-linguistic repartition of human communities, the distribution of major cognitive sets of word-related terms, and the inferred genetic clusters of common walnut and sweet chestnut populations across Eurasia. Our data indicated that isolation by distance processes, landscape heterogeneity and cultural boundaries might have promoted simultaneously human language diversification and walnut/chestnut differentiation across the same geographic macro-regions. Hotspots of common walnut and sweet chestnut genetic diversity were associated with areas of linguistic enrichment in the Himalayas, Trans-Caucasus, and Pyrenees Mountains, where common walnuts and sweet chestnuts had sustained ties to human culture since the Early Bronze Age. Our multidisciplinary approach supported the indirect and direct role of humans in shaping walnut and chestnut diversity across Eurasia from the EBA (e.g., Persian Empire and Greek-Roman colonization) until the first evidence of active selection and clonal propagation by grafting of both species. Our findings highlighted the benefit of an efficient integration of the relevant cultural factors in the classical genome (G) × environmental (E) model and the urgency of a systematic application of the biocultural diversity concept in the reconstruction of the evolutionary history of tree species.

Project description:Nine wild Iberian provenances of Castanea sativa Mill. grouped in two gene pools, North Iberian Peninsula and Mediterranean, were evaluated for several adaptive traits in two provenance-progeny trials with the aim of evaluating the role of natural selection in shaping adaptive variation and increasing our understanding of the genetic structure of this species, as well as reporting complete information on the genetic variation among and within the studied populations. An annual growth rhythm experiment was evaluated during the first 3 years after establishment for phenology, growth, stem form and survival, and a periodic drought-stress experiment was evaluated for dry weight, growth, survival and other related drought traits in both well-watered and drought-stress treatments. The high genetic variability reported in both trials is largely due to the genetic variation among populations. The significant differences reported between quantitative genetic and neutral marker differentiation indicated the local adaptation of these populations through directional selection, mainly for phenology, growth and biomass allocation. A clinal variation among populations was determined through correlations of phenology with latitude and xerothermic index of the provenances, showing that central and southern Mediterranean populations had earlier phenology than northern populations and that drought played a relevant role in this differentiation. The significant correlation between phenological traits and the ancestry values in the Mediterranean gene pool supported the different pattern of behavior between both gene pools and also indicated the existence of two ecotypes: xeric and mesophytic ecotypes, corresponding to Mediterranean and North Iberian gene pools, respectively. The results obtained in the drought-stress experiment confirmed that, in general terms, xeric populations showed a greater adaptability to drought, with more developed root systems and higher survival than northern populations. Moreover, the genetic variability observed within populations indicated the potential response capacity of Iberian C. sativa populations to undergo fast adaptive evolution.

Dataset Information

The Dynamics of Flower Development in Castanea sativa Mill.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets