Single- and low-copy genes are less likely to be subject to concerted evolution. Thus, they are appropriate tools to study the origin and evolution of polyploidy plant taxa. The plastid 3-phosphoglycerate kinase gene (Pgk-1) sequences from 44 accessions of Triticum and Aegilops, representing diploid, tetraploid, and hexaploid wheats, were used to estimate the origin of Triticum petropavlovskyi....

To examine the role of isoamylase1 (ISA1) in amylopectin biosynthesis in plants, a genomic DNA fragment from Aegilops tauschii was introduced into the ISA1-deficient rice (Oryza sativa) sugary-1 mutant line EM914, in which endosperm starch is completely replaced by phytoglycogen. A. tauschii is the D genome donor of wheat (Triticum aestivum), and the introduced fragment effectively included the...

We investigated the composition and the basis of genome expansion in the core Triticeae genome using Aegilops tauschii, the D-genome donor of bread wheat. We sequenced an unfiltered genomic shotgun (trs) and a methylation-filtration (tmf) library of A. tauschii, and analyzed wheat expressed sequence tags (ESTs) to estimate the expression of genes and transposable elements (TEs). The sampled D-g...

Transposable elements (TE) exist in the genomes of nearly all eukaryotes. TE mobilization through 'cut-and-paste' or 'copy-and-paste' mechanisms causes their insertions into other repetitive sequences, gene loci and other DNA. An insertion of a TE commonly creates a unique TE junction in the genome. TE junctions are also randomly distributed along chromosomes and therefore useful for genome-wid...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The diploid goat grass Aegilops tauschii (2n = 2x = 14) is native to the Middle East and is the D-genome donor to hexaploid bread wheat. The aim of this study was to measure the diversity of different subspecies and varieties of wild Ae. tauschii collected across the major areas where it grows in Iran and to examine patterns of diversity related to the taxa and geography. ...

Simple sequence repeats (SSRs, also known as microsatellites) are known to be mutational hotspots in genomes. DNA rearrangements have also been reported to accompany allopolyploidization. A study of the effect of allopolyploidization on SSR mutation is therefore important for understanding the origin and evolutionary dynamics of SSRs in allopolyploids. Three synthesized double haploid (SynDH) p...

Hybridization is a prominent evolutionary force promoting plant diversification, either with or without subsequent genome doubling (Abbott et al., 2013; Soltis et al., 2014; Yakimowski & Rieseberg, 2014). The Aegilops–Triticum complex is an ideal system to investigate how natural hybridization and allopolyploidization have caused species diversification (Matsuoka, 2011). Recently,Marcussen et a...

Our project is to measure differential responses of various alien cytoplasms in a specific nuclear background to various pathogens to provide a better understanding on the effect of nuclear-cytoplasmic interactions on biotic stress tolerance. In this study, we analyzed the nuclear donors of 56-1 (tetraploid), and Chris and Selkirk (both hexaploid), alloplasmic lines. Fifty selected alloplasmic ...

genetic drift of germplasm in cultivated wheat is good motivation for studying genetic diversity in its wild relatives. in this study, r-rap, a new retrotransposon-based marker, was applied to assess the structure and genetic diversity of 30 accessions of aegilops sp. originating from different geographical regions of iran. the 15 r-rap primer combinations revealed a total of 338 bands ranging ...