Mitochondrial evolution of bryophytes

BRYONET
Dear all,

I am presently doing a molecular phylogeny of the genus Dicranum Hedw.
(Dicranaceae) and I'm looking for mitochondrial genes to be sequenced.

It is known that the chondriome exibits duplication, replication
...that make the information difficult to be interpreted and that's
why, among others, people prefere to sequence plastid genes.

But publications related to this subject are all about tracheophytes
and I wondering if bryophyte chondriome works like tracheophyte
chondriome ?? Do you know publications related to this ?

Thanks in advance,

Amélie

Amélie PICHONET

PhD Student, Teaching Assistant
National Museum of Natural History
Departement of Systematique and Evolution, Bryology Team
Case 39, 57 rue Cuvier
75005 Paris - France
Tel : 00 33 1 40 79 31 88
Fax : 00 33 1 40 79 35 94

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BRYONET

Dear Amelie,

I have used mtDNA markers during my PhD thesis.
I have used rps3, nad5 and nad4-5 spacer

They have proven to be quite useful and show good variation. The use of
mtDNA is not uncommon in phylogenetic studies of mosses.
I will check the references and will send it to you soon (I am not in my
office right now).
Best Regards

Paulo Camara, PhD.
Missouri Botanical Garden, PoBox 299
Saint Louis, MO. USA. 63130
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BRYONET

Dear Amélie,

I greatly recommend the papers summarised at
http://izmb.de/knoop/papers.htm as my supervisor Volker Knoop and his
research group (then in Ulm, now in Bonn, Germany) were the first to
introduce mitochondrial loci for bryophyte phylogeny in 1999.
The mitochondrial genomes in bryophytes (and in plants in general) are
known to have very conserved gene sequences with sometimes highly
varying gene order, that's why only few intergenic spacer regions are
conserved within and between liverworts, mosses and hornworts, the
nad5-nad4 spacer being one of them. As the genes do not exhibit much
variation, introns are the preferred target such as the second
nad5-intron in mosses, that is widely used for phylogenetic studies in
mosses and liverworts.
For genus phylogeny you intend to do I would rather go for mitochondrial
introns and spacer regions.

Best wishes,

Ute.


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Ute Wahrmund
Abt Molekulare Evolution
IZMB - Institut für Zelluläre
und Molekulare Botanik
Universität Bonn
Kirschallee 1, 53115 Bonn
Tel: 0228/736523 Fax: 0228/736557
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