State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 20 Nanxincun, Haidian District, Beijing 100093, China.
Plant Cell Rep. 2012 Dec;31(12):2199-213. doi: 10.1007/s00299-012-1330-0. Epub 2012 Sep 9.
Highly variable regions of chloroplast genome were found to be useful in the detection of plant genetic diversity at micro-evolution level. Our methodology will improve understanding and conservation of plant diversity. Tree peonies are famous flowers with about 2,000 cultivars in the world, belonging to Paeonia sect. Moutan of the Paeoniaceae. They are traditionally classified based on flower forms and colors. Due to the limited number of DNA and morphological markers, and the existence of synonyms and homonyms, evaluation on genetic diversity of so many cultivars remains a challenge. In most cases, it is difficult and even impossible to discriminate tree peony cultivars when they are not in flower. In this study, single nucleotide polymorphism detected from the hyper-variable regions of chloroplast genome was employed to separate tree peony cultivars into different maternal lineages which can be expressed briefly by a nucleotide molecular formula. Our approach enabled a much higher resolution of cultivar identification and classification that has not been obtained before. The newly developed hyper-variable chloroplast markers, as an independent source of taxonomic characteristics, provided novel evidences and higher resolution ability that are helpful in building an effective classification system for evaluation, conservation, and utilization of the tree peony germplasm resources at cultivar level.
叶绿体基因组的高变区被发现可用于检测微进化水平的植物遗传多样性。我们的方法将有助于增进对植物多样性的了解和保护。牡丹是著名的花卉，全世界约有 2000 个品种，属于毛茛科芍药属牡丹组。它们传统上是根据花型和花色来分类的。由于 DNA 和形态标记数量有限，以及同义词和同形异义词的存在，对如此多品种的遗传多样性进行评估仍然是一个挑战。在大多数情况下，当牡丹不在花期时，很难甚至不可能区分它们的品种。在这项研究中，我们从叶绿体基因组的高变区检测到单核苷酸多态性，将牡丹品种分为不同的母系，并用核苷酸分子公式来简要表示。我们的方法能够实现更高的品种鉴定和分类分辨率，这是以前没有获得过的。新开发的高变叶绿体标记作为分类特征的独立来源，为建立有效的牡丹品种资源评价、保护和利用分类系统提供了新的证据和更高的分辨率能力。
