Abstract
Flower development in angiosperms is controlled in part by floral homeotic genes, many of which are members of the plant MADS-box regulatory gene family. The evolutionary history of these developmental genes was reconstructed using 74 loci from 15 dicot, three monocot, and one conifer species. Molecular clock estimates suggest that the different floral homeotic gene lineages began to diverge from one another about 450–500 mya, around the time of the origin of land plants themselves.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bowman JL, Alvarez J, Weigel D, Meyerowitz EM, Smyth D (1993) Control of flower development in Arabidopsis thaliana by APETALA1 and interacting genes. Development 119:721–743
Coen E (1991) The role of homeotic genes in flower development and evolution. Ann Rev Plant Plysiol Plant Mol Biol 42:241–279
Coen E, Meyerowitz EM (1991) The war of the whorls: genetic interactions controlling flower development. Nature 353:31–37
Crepet WL, Feldman GD (1991) The earliest remains of grasses in the fossil record. Am J Bot 78:1010–1014
Davies B, Schwarz-Sommer Zs (1994) Control of floral organ identity by homeotic MADS-box transcription factors. Cell Diff 20:235–258
Doyle J (1994) Evolution of a plant homeotic multigene family: towards connecting molecular systematics and molecular developmental genetics. Syst Biol 43:307–328
Gillespie JH (1991) The causes of molecular evolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Graham L (1993) Origin of land plants. John Wiley, New York
Kumar S, Tamura K, Nei M (1994) Molecular Evolutionary Genetic Analysis Package 1.1. Institute of Molecular Evolutionary Genetics, Pennsylvania State University, State College
Ma H, Yanofsky MF, Meyerowitz EM (1991) AGL1-AGL6, an Arabidopsis gene family with similarity to floral homeotic and transcription factor genes. Genes Dev 5:484–495
Munster T, Pahnke J, Di Rosa A, Kim J, Martin W, Saedler H, Theissen G (1997) Floral homeotic genes were recruited from homologous MADS-box genes preexisting in the common ancestor of ferns and seed plants. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 94:2415–2420
Pollock R, Treismann R (1991) Human SRF-related proteins—DNA-binding properties and potential regulatory targets. Genes Dev 5: 2327–2341
Purugganan MD, Rounsley SD, Schmidt RJ, Yanofsky MF (1995) Molecular evolution of flower development —diversification of the plant MADS-box regulatory gene family. Genetics 140:345–356
Savard L, Li P, Strauss SH, Chase MW, Michaud M, Bousquet J (1994) Chloroplast and nuclear gene sequences indicate late Pennsylvanian time for the last common ancestor of extant seed plants. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 91:5163–5167
Stewart WN, Rothwell GW (1993) Paleobotany and the evolution of plants, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Swofford D (1993) Phylogenetic analysis using parsimony. Illinois Natural History Survey, Champaign
Tajima F, Nei M (1984) Estimation of evolutionary distance between nucleotide sequences. Mol Biol Evol 1:269–285
Tandre K, Albert VA, Sundas A, Engstrom P (1995) Conifer homologues to genes that control floral development in angiosperms. Plant Mol Biol 27:69–78
Weigel D (1995) The genetics of flower development —from floral induction to ovule morphogenesis. Ann Rev Genetics 29:19–39
Wolfe K, Gouy M, Yang Y, Sharp P, Li WH (1989) Date of the monocot dicot divergence estimated from chloroplast DNA sequence data. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 86:5201–5205
Yanofsky MF (1995) Floral meristems to floral organs —genes controlling early events in Arabidopsis flower development. Ann Rev Plant Phys Plant Mol Biol 46:167–188
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Purugganan, M.D. The MADS-box floral homeotic gene lineages predate the origin of seed plants: Phylogenetic and molecular clock estimates. J Mol Evol 45, 392–396 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00006244
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00006244