Karyotype evolution in species with identical chromosome number but belonging to distinct phylogenetic clades is a long-standing question of plant biology, intractable by conventional cytogenetic techniques. Here, we apply comparative chromosome painting (CCP) to reconstruct karyotype evolution in eight species with x=7 (2n=14, 28) chromosomes from six Brassicaceae tribes. CCP data allowed us t...

A growing body of evidence is pointing to an important role of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in the evolution of higher plants. However, reports of HGTs of transposable elements (TEs) in plants are still scarce, and only one case is known of a class II transposon horizontally transferred between grasses. To investigate possible TE transfers in dicots, we performed transcriptome screening in th...

Pollen aperture type, shape, size, polar axis length, equatorial P/E ratio, colpus thickness of the sexine and nexine, S/N ornamentation lumen shape width were determined by using light scanning electron microscope. A multivariate analysis was carried out Gover’s general similarity coefficient UPGMA based on 3 qualitative 8 quantitative pollen characters for 43 taxa belonging to 30 genera 19 tr...