Diversity (Apr 2010)

Using Chloroplast trnF Pseudogenes for Phylogeography in Arabidopsis Lyrata

  • Andrew Tedder,
  • Peter N. Hoebe,
  • Stephen W. Ansell,
  • Barbara K. Mable

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/d2040653
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2, no. 4
pp. 653 – 678

Abstract

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The chloroplast trnL-F region has been extensively utilized for evolutionary analysis in plants. In the Brassicaceae this fragment contains 1–12 tandemly repeated trnF pseudogene copies in addition to the functional trnF gene. Here we assessed the potential of these highly variable, but complexly evolving duplications, to resolve the population history of the model plant Arabidopsis lyrata. While the region 5’ of the duplications had negligible sequence diversity, extensive variation in pseudogene copy number and nucleotide composition revealed otherwise cryptic population structure in eastern North America. Thus structural changes can be phylogeographically informative when pseudogene evolutionary relationships can be resolved.

Keywords