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Originally published in Science Express on 26 July 2007
Science 24 August 2007:
Vol. 317. no. 5841, pp. 1070 - 1072
DOI: 10.1126/science.1143153
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Reports

The Evolution of Selfing in Arabidopsis thaliana

Chunlao Tang,1 Christopher Toomajian,1 Susan Sherman-Broyles,2 Vincent Plagnol,1,3 Ya-Long Guo,4 Tina T. Hu,1 Richard M. Clark,4 June B. Nasrallah,2 Detlef Weigel,4,5 Magnus Nordborg1*

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, which is 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 suggests that selfing most likely evolved roughly a million years ago or more.

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 Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation/Wellcome Trust Diabetes and Inflammation Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust/Medical Research Council Building, Cambridge, CB2 2XY, UK.
4 Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
5 Plant Biology Laboratory, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA.

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

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