Aneura pinguis is a thalloid liverwort species with broad geographical distribution. It is composed of cryptic species, however, the number of cryptic species within A. pinguis is not known. Five cpDNA regions (matK, rbcL, rpoC1, trnH-psbA and trnL-trnF) and the entire nuclear ITS region were studied in 130 samples of A. pinguis from different geographical regions. The relationships between the...

Tripterygium wilfordii (Celastraceae) is a traditional Chinese medicine; and the dried root and rhizome constitute the main officinal parts. Tripterygium wilfordii has been identified as a potential candidate for the treatment of systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, nephritis, asthma, leprosy, and cancer. The phylogenetic relationships within the Tripterygium genus are ambiguous;...

Zieria Sm. (Rutaceae, Boronieae) is predominantly native to eastern Australia except for one species, which is endemic to New Caledonia. For this study, sequence data of two non-coding chloroplast regions (trnL-trnF, and rpl32-trnL), one nuclear region (ITS region) and various morphological characters, based on Armstrong's (2002) taxonomic revision of Zieria, from 32 of the 42 described species...

For Nicotiana, with 75 naturally occurring species (40 diploids and 35 allopolyploids), we produced 4656bp of plastid DNA sequence for 87 accessions and various outgroups. The loci sequenced were trnL intron and trnL-F spacer, trnS-G spacer and two genes, ndhF and matK. Parsimony and Bayesian analyses yielded identical relationships for the diploids, and these are consistent with other data, pr...

The genus Lespedeza (Fabaceae) consists of 40 species disjunctively distributed in East Asia and eastern North America. Phylogenetic relationships of all Lespedeza species and closely related genera were reconstructed using maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood, and Bayesian analyses of sequence data from five chloroplast (rpl16, rpl32-trnL, rps16-trnQ, trnL-F, and trnK/matK) and one nuclear (I...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The phylogenetic relationships between species of Coffea and Psilanthus remain poorly understood, owing to low levels of sequence variation recovered in previous studies, coupled with relatively limited species sampling. In this study, the relationships between Coffea and Psilanthus species are assessed based on substantially increased molecular sequence data and greatly imp...

The CRM domain is a recently recognized RNA binding domain found in three group II intron splicing factors in chloroplasts, in a bacterial protein that associates with ribosome precursors, and in a family of uncharacterized proteins in plants. To elucidate the functional repertoire of proteins with CRM domains, we studied CFM2 (for CRM Family Member 2), which harbors four CRM domains. RNA coimm...

• The ectomycorrhizal (ECM) symbiosis was historically considered restricted to the temperate zones, but recent studies have shown the importance of this symbiosis across the tropics. We examined ECM fungal diversity, host plant phylogeny and ECM host preferences in a rainforest dominated by the leguminous host plants Dicymbe corymbosa, Dicymbe altsonii and Aldina insignis. • Ectomycorrhizal fu...

Phylogenetic resolution is often low within groups of recently diverged taxa due to a paucity of phylogenetically informative characters. We tested the relative utility of seven noncoding cpDNA regions and a pair of homoeologous nuclear genes for resolving recent divergences, using tetraploid cottons (Gossypium) as a model system. The five tetraploid species of Gossypium are a monophyletic asse...

Abstract A molecular phylogenetic study of Bystropogon L'Her. (Lamiaceae) is presented. We performed a cladistic analysis of nucleotide sequences of the internal transcribed spacers (ITS), of the nuclear ribosomal DNA, and of the trnL gene and trnL-trnF intergenic spacer of the chloroplast DNA. Bystropogon odoratissimus is the only species endemic to the Canary Islands that occurs in the three ...