Determining Genome Size from Spores of Seedless Vascular Plants

Abstract

Seedless vascular plants, including ferns and lycophytes, produce spores to initiate the gametophyte stage and to complete sexual reproduction. Approximately 10% of them are apomictic through the production of genomic unreduced spores. Being able to measure the spore nuclear DNA content is therefore important to infer their reproduction mode. Here we present a protocol of spore flow cytometry that allows an efficient determination of the reproductive modes of seedless vascular plants.