1. Chloroplast Inheritance 1.1. Early Cytological Observations of Chloroplast Inheritance 1.2. Chloroplast Inheritance in Isogamous Organisms 1.2.1. Unicellular Green Algae: Chlamydomonas reinhardtii 1.2.2. Discovery of Chloroplast DNA 1.2.3. Molecular Mechanism of Non-Mendelian Inheritance of cpDNA 1.2.4. Transformation of cpDNA 1.2.5. Active Digestion of mt– cpDNA Revealed in a Single Zygote ...

BACKGROUND Bryopsis hypnoides Lamouroux is a siphonous green alga, and its extruded protoplasm can aggregate spontaneously in seawater and develop into mature individuals. The chloroplast of B. hypnoides is the biggest organelle in the cell and shows strong autonomy. To better understand this organelle, we sequenced and analyzed the chloroplast genome of this green alga. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS A ...

We have analyzed the changes occurring in the chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) of taxa belonging to the Phaseolus vulgaris complex to help clarify relationships among species of this complex. Two restriction maps for 11 restriction enzymes comprising the whole chloroplast genome from a wild P. vulgaris and a wild P. coccineus accession were constructed. These maps allowed us to compare a total of 330 re...

The North American plums are a closely related group that are not easily circumscribed, have overlapping morphologies, and are known to hybridize. We previously showed that the North American plums are a closely related, monophyletic group of taxa with little to no cpDNA sequence divergence between taxa. In that study, we came to the unanticipated conclusion that relationships inferred among th...

Both the chloroplast and mitochondrial genomes are used extensively in studies of plant population genetics and systematics. In the majority of angiosperms, the chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) are each primarily transmitted maternally, but rare biparental transmission is possible. The extent to which the cpDNA and mtDNA are in linkage disequilibrium is argued to be depende...

The order Cornales descends from the earliest split in the Asterid clade of flowering plants. Despite a few phylogenetic studies, relationships among families within Cornales remain unclear. In the present study, we increased taxon and character sampling to further resolve the relationships and to date the early diversification events of the order. We conducted phylogenetic analyses of sequence...

We have used inhibitors of methylation to evaluate the proposal that the extent of methylation of chloroplast DNA ( cpDNA ) of the mating type-plus (mt+) parent occurring during gametogenesis in wild-type Chlamydomonas renhardtii is directly correlated with the uniparental transmission of chloroplast genes by this parent [ Sager , R., Grabowy , C. & Sano , H. (1981) Cell 24, 41-47]. As detected...

A recent circumpolar survey of chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) haplotypes identified Pleistocene glacial refugia for the Arctic-Alpine Saxifraga oppositifolia in the Arctic and, potentially, at more southern latitudes. However, evidence for glacial refugia within the ice sheet covering northern Europe during the last glacial period was not detected either with cpDNA or in another study of S. oppositifo...

BACKGROUND The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) is one of the most extensive habitats for alpine plants in the world. Climatic oscillations during the Quaternary ice age had a dramatic effect on species ranges on the QTP and the adjacent areas. However, how the distribution ranges of aquatic plant species shifted on the QTP in response to Quaternary climatic changes remains almost unknown. METHO...