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Introducing Intron Locus cox1i624 for Phylogenetic Analyses in Bryophytes: On the Issue of Takakia as Sister Genus to All Other Extant Mosses

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Abstract

Liverworts are well supported as the sister group to all other land plants (embryophytes) by molecular data. Observations strongly supporting this earliest dichotomy in embryophyte evolution are the strikingly different introns occurring in the mitochondrial DNAs of liverworts versus non-liverwort embryophytes (NLE), including the mosses. A final conclusion on the most basal lineages of mosses, for which genera such as Sphagnum and Takakia are the most likely candidates, is lacking. We have now investigated cox1i624, a mitochondrial group I intron conserved between the moss Physcomitrella patens and the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha. Focusing on a sampling of liverwort and moss genera, which had previously been identified as early branching taxa in their respective clades, we find that group I intron cox1i624 is universally conserved in all 33 mosses and 11 liverworts investigated. The group I intron core secondary structure is well conserved between the two ancient land plant clades. However, whereas dramatic size reductions are seen in the moss phylogeny, exactly the opposite is observed for liverworts. The cox1i624g1 locus was used for phylogenetic tree reconstruction also in combination with data sets of nad5i753g1 as well as chloroplast loci rbcL and rps4. The phylogenetic analyses revealed (i) very good support for the Treubiopsida as sister clade to all other liverworts, (ii) a sister group relationship of the nematodontous Tetraphidopsida and Polytrichopsida and (iii) two rivalling hypotheses about the basal-most moss genus with mitochondrial loci suggesting an isolated Takakia as sister to all other mosses and chloroplast loci indicating a TakakiaSphagnum clade.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Prof. Jan-Peter Frahm, Bonn, Prof. Bernard Goffinet, Storrs, Dr. Hermann Muhle, Ulm, Prof. Rüdiger Mues, Saarbrücken and Prof. Yin-Long Qiu, Ann Arbor, for their friendly help in providing biological materials and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments to improve the quality of this article. We are grateful to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG for support of our work via grant Kn411/6 and wish to thank Milena Groth-Malonek for providing nad5 liverwort sequences and the students of our lab courses PMEP and WP20 for their concentrated work and successful contributions to this project. Preparing this manuscript was finished on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall (on November, 9th in 1989), experienced by the senior author of this paper in what was West-Berlin at this time. We wish to express our deepest gratitude to all people who participated in initiating the peaceful revolution as well as those developing it a historic success and in this way also paving the way for the GDR-born first author to freely choose her career-path.

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Volkmar, U., Knoop, V. Introducing Intron Locus cox1i624 for Phylogenetic Analyses in Bryophytes: On the Issue of Takakia as Sister Genus to All Other Extant Mosses. J Mol Evol 70, 506–518 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00239-010-9348-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00239-010-9348-9

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