Abstract
It is known that more than 70% of plant species have experienced polyploidization. Polyploidization could have played an important role for the diversification of organisms. In this study, we focus on the contribution of polyploidization to evolution of environmental tolerance and adaptive radiation in Arabidopsis relatives.
The genus Cardamine includes more than two hundreds species and about half of the species are allopolyploid. Their living environment is quite diverse along water gradient. The diploid species tend to live in either wet conditions or open habitats, and the polyploid species tend to live in intermediate habitats where they experience both wet and dry condition. The phylogenetic analysis revealed that polyploidization occurred between a diploid from wet and a diploid from dry recurrently and contributed to the adaptive radiation to new niche.
This habitat features indicate that polyploid species could exploit either of the parental gene expression patterns depending on the environment. We utilized Arabidopsis microarray for the gene expression analysis of the two diploid species from wet and dry habitats and their allotetraploid species.
