Abstract
A PCR based survey of Festuca ovina plants from populations around the southern part of the Baltic Sea demonstrates both geographic and molecular variation in the enzyme gene PgiC2, horizontally transferred from a Poa-species. Our results show that PgiC2—a natural functional nuclear transgene—is not a local ephemeral phenomenon but is present in a very large number of individuals. We find also that its frequency is geographically variable and that it appears in more than one molecular form. The chloroplast variation in the region does not indicate any distinct subdivision due to different colonization routes after the last glaciation. Our data illustrate the geographic and molecular variation that may occur in natural populations with a polymorphic, unfixed transgene affected by diverse kinds of mutational and evolutionary processes.
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Acknowledgments
We wish to thank Bengt Jacobsson for excellent help with the plants in the greenhouse, Siri Malmgren who performed the first studies on chloroplast variation, and Carl-Johan Andersson who investigated running PCR on sample mixtures. Maarit Jaarola and Torbjörn Säll gave us valuable comments on the manuscript; Torbjörn gave us also assistance with the statistical tests. The research was supported by the Swedish Research Council, the Erik Philip-Sörensen Fundation, the Nilsson-Ehle Fund, and the Jörgen Lindström Fund.
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Vallenback, P., Bengtsson, B.O. & Ghatnekar, L. Geographic and molecular variation in a natural plant transgene. Genetica 138, 355–362 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10709-009-9425-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10709-009-9425-4