Evolutionary transitions in the Asteraceae coincide with marked shifts in transposable element abundance.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The transposable element (TE) content of the genomes of plant species varies from near zero in the genome of Utricularia gibba to more than 80% in many species. It is not well understood whether this variation in genome composition results from common mechanisms or stochastic variation. The major obstacles to investigating mechanisms of TE evolution have been a lack of comparative genomic data sets and efficient computational methods for measuring differences in TE composition between species. In this study, we describe patterns of TE evolution in 14 species in the flowering plant family Asteraceae and 1 outgroup species in the Calyceraceae to investigate phylogenetic patterns of TE dynamics in this important group of plants.

Results

Our findings indicate that TE

SUBMITTER: Staton SE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4546089 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature