Identifying the North American Plum Species Phylogenetic Signal Using Nuclear, Mitochondrial, and Chloroplast DNA Markers

Abstract

Prunus phylogeny has been extensively studied using chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) sequences. Chloroplast DNA has a slow rate of evolution, which is beneficial to determine species relationships at a deeper level. The chloroplast-based phylogenies have a limitation due to the transfer of this organelle by interspecific hybridization. This creates difficulties when studying species relationships. Interspecific hybrids in Prunus occur naturally and have been reported, which creates a problem when using cpDNA-based phylogenies to determine species relationships. The main goal of this project was to identify nuclear gene regions that could provide an improved phylogenetic signal at the species level in Prunus. A total of 11 species in Prunus and within section Prunocerasus were used. Two peach (Prunus persica) haploids were used to test the reliability of the molecular markers developed in this project to amplify single-copy genes. A total of 33 major genes associated with vernalization response, 16 with tree architecture, and 3 with isozymes, were tested. Similarly, 41 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers, seven cpDNA regions, and the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region, were used. Multiple gene regions were identified and provided the greatest number of characters, greatest variability, and improved phylogenetic signal at the species level in Prunus section Prunocerasus. Out of those, trnH-psbA, PGI, MAX4, AXR1, LFY, PHYE, and VRN1 are recommended for a phylogenetic analysis with a larger number of taxa. The use of potentially informative characters (PICS) as a measure of how informative a region will be for phylogenetic analyses has been previously reported beneficial in cpDNA regions and it clearly was important in this research. This will allow selecting the region(s), which can be used in phylogenetic studies with higher number of taxa.