Phylogeny of Flowering Plants by the Chloroplast Genome Sequences: in Search of a “Lucky Gene”

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M. D. Logacheva^1*, A. A. Penin², T. H. Samigullin³, C. M. Vallejo-Roman³, and A. S. Antonov³

¹Faculty of Bioengineering and Bioinformatics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 119991 Moscow, Russia; E-mail: maria.log@gmail.com

²Biological Faculty, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 119991 Moscow, Russia

³Belozersky Institute of Physico-Chemical Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 119991 Moscow, Russia

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

Received August 22, 2007

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One of the most complicated remaining problems of molecular-phylogenetic analysis is choosing an appropriate genome region. In an ideal case, such a region should have two specific properties: (i) results of analysis using this region should be similar to the results of multigene analysis using the maximal number of regions; (ii) this region should be arranged compactly and be significantly shorter than the multigene set. The second condition is necessary to facilitate sequencing and extension of taxons under analysis, the number of which is also crucial for molecular phylogenetic analysis. Such regions have been revealed for some groups of animals and have been designated as “lucky genes”. We have carried out a computational experiment on analysis of 41 complete chloroplast genomes of flowering plants aimed at searching for a “lucky gene” for reconstruction of their phylogeny. It is shown that the phylogenetic tree inferred from a combination of translated nucleotide sequences of genes encoding subunits of plastid RNA polymerase is closest to the tree constructed using all protein coding sites of the chloroplast genome. The only node for which a contradiction is observed is unstable according to the different type analyses. For all the other genes or their combinations, the coincidence is significantly worse. The RNA polymerase genes are compactly arranged in the genome and are fourfold shorter than the total length of protein coding genes used for phylogenetic analysis. The combination of all necessary features makes this group of genes main candidates for the role of “lucky gene” in studying phylogeny of flowering plants.

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KEY WORDS: molecular phylogeny, angiosperms, gene sampling, chloroplast genome, plastid RNA polymerase

DOI: 10.1134/S0006297907120061

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