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Published Online July 26, 2007
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1143153

Reports

Submitted on March 28, 2007
Accepted on July 17, 2007

The Evolution of Selfing in Arabidopsis thaliana

Chunlao Tang 1, Christopher Toomajian 1, Susan Sherman-Broyles 2, Vincent Plagnol 3, Ya-Long Guo 4, Tina T. Hu 5, Richard M. Clark 4, June B. Nasrallah 2, Detlef Weigel 6, Magnus Nordborg 1*

1 Molecular and Computational Biology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA.
2 Department of Plant Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
3 Molecular and Computational Biology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA; JDRF/WT Diabetes and Inflammation laboratory, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust/MRC Building, Cambridge, CB2 2XY, UK.
4 Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
5 Molecular and Computational Biology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA.
6 Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, 72076 Tübingen, Germany; Plant Biology Laboratory, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Magnus Nordborg , E-mail: magnus{at}usc.edu

Unlike most of its close relatives, Arabidopsis thaliana is capable of self-pollination. In other members of the mustard family, outcrossing is ensured by the complex self-incompatibility (S) locus, which harbors multiple diverged specificity haplotypes that effectively prevent selfing. We investigated the role of the S locus in the evolution of and transition to selfing in A. thaliana. We found that the S locus of A. thaliana harbored considerable diversity, an apparent remnant of polymorphism in the outcrossing ancestor. Thus, the fixation of a single inactivated S locus allele cannot have been a key step in the transition to selfing. An analysis of the genome-wide pattern of linkage disequilibrium (LD) suggests that selfing most likely evolved roughly a million years ago or more.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Selection on Amino Acid Substitutions in Arabidopsis.
J. P. Foxe, V.-u.-N. Dar, H. Zheng, M. Nordborg, B. S. Gaut, and S. I. Wright (2008)
Mol. Biol. Evol. 25, 1375-1383
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
High DNA Sequence Diversity in Pericentromeric Genes of the Plant Arabidopsis lyrata.
A. Kawabe, A. Forrest, S. I. Wright, and D. Charlesworth (2008)
Genetics 179, 985-995
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Patterns of Molecular Evolution in Caenorhabditis Preclude Ancient Origins of Selfing.
A. D. Cutter, J. D. Wasmuth, and N. L. Washington (2008)
Genetics 178, 2093-2104
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)