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Abstract Detail



Molecular Ecology and Evolution

Layman, Nathan [1], Busch, Jeremiah [2].

The Maintenance of Self-Incompatibility in the Face of Genome Duplication.

     Understanding how chromosome copy number impacts the evolution of mating system is an important goal of evolutionary biology.  Interestingly, while genome duplication is common in flowering plants, there is much debate on how it should impact the ability of populations to maintain high levels of outcrossing.  In fact, a common assumption, based on early theoretical work and more recent phylogenetic studies, is that this will simply lead to the loss of self-incompatibility (Stebbins, 1950; Robertson, Goldberg, Igić, 2011).  This belief is primarily due to two factors.  The first is that, as chromosome copy number increases, plants have greater difficulty finding pollen that is compatible, which reduces the availability of potential mates.  The second is that inbreeding depression, the main pressure thought to resisting selfing, is weakened by genome duplication.  However, dominance effects at the gene controlling self-incompatibility may undermine one or both of these factors.
     To address this question, we created a model to evaluate if dominance relationships would allow obligate outcrossing to be maintained in the face of genome duplication. The model was constructed using C++ and was informed by expanding and synthesizing previous work on inbreeding depression, dominance and incompatibility (Charlesworth, 1988; Charlesworth 1990, Ronfort 1999).  Our results show that dominance expressed in both the pollen and pistil tissues allows outcrossing to be maintained after genome duplication, which can potentially have large impacts our understanding of both of species persistence and range expansion. Further work will study how population size and genetic diversity interact with dominance to influence the maintenance of self-incompatibility in polyploid plant species.


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1 - Washington State University , School of Biological Sciences, PO Box 355 , Albion, WA, 99102, USA
2 - Washington State University, School of Biological Sciences, PO Box 644236, Pullman, WA, 99164, USA

Keywords:
Self-incompatibility
evolution of selfing
mating system
Genome duplication
polyploidy
Evolution.

Presentation Type: Poster:Posters for Topics
Session: P
Location: Eyrie/Boise Centre
Date: Monday, July 28th, 2014
Time: 5:30 PM
Number: PME004
Abstract ID:385
Candidate for Awards:Genetics Section Poster Award


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