Duplicated genes let mustard family plants time flowering as climate shifted
Zhao BY, Zhou SZ, Liu J, Zhong MC, Dong X
Plant Signaling
The broccoli, kale, radishes, and arugula in your garden all belong to this same family, and the gene duplications described here are part of why their wild relatives could spread into so many different climates and flowering niches.
Researchers compared the genomes of dozens of species in the mustard and cabbage family to figure out how this group diversified into thousands of species so quickly, tens of millions of years ago. They found that a gene controlling when plants flower got copied multiple times, and each new copy started responding differently to temperature swings, letting related plants bloom at different times and adapt to new environments. That flexibility in flowering timing may have been a key ingredient in this plant family's evolutionary success story.
Key Findings
About 540 gene families expanded during Brassicaceae radiation, including 66 genes tied to flowering time regulation, coinciding with the Oligocene-Miocene transition and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau uplift.
The flowering gene FLC was duplicated via a whole-genome duplication event ~35 million years ago into MAF2/3, then further tandem duplications produced MAF4/5, and later random duplications yielded FLM/MAF1 in some lineages.
These duplicated MAF gene copies show distinctly different expression patterns under fluctuating temperature conditions, suggesting they diversified in function after duplication.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists traced how the mustard/cabbage plant family exploded into thousands of species by studying duplicated copies of a key flowering-time gene, showing that gaining extra gene copies helped plants fine-tune when they flower as climates shifted.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Dynamic evolution of FLC/MAF-like genes accompanying Brassicaceae radiation.
Understanding the molecular basis of rapid species radiation remains challenging in evolutionary biology. In angiosperms, Brassicaceae exemplifies rapid radiation following the At-α whole-genome du...
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