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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Systematics and Evolution
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1425158

Phylogeny, adaptive evolution and taxonomy of Acronema (Apiaceae): evidence from plastid phylogenomics and morphological data

Provisionally accepted
Lian Chen Lian Chen Boni Song Boni Song Lei Yang Lei Yang Yuan Wang Yuan Wang Yi Y. Wang Yi Y. Wang Xueyimu Aou Xueyimu Aou Xing-Jin HE Xing-Jin HE Song-Dong Zhou Song-Dong Zhou *
  • College of Life Science, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The genus Acronema, belonging to Apiaceae, includes approximately 25 species distributed in the high-altitude Sino-Himalayan region from E Nepal to SW China. This genus is a taxonomically complex genus with often indistinct species boundaries and problematic generic delimitation with Sinocarum and other close genera, largely due to the varied morphological characteristics. To explore the phylogenetic relationships and clarify the limits of the genus Acronema and its related genera, we reconstructed a reliable phylogenetic framework with high support and resolution based on two molecular datasets (plastome data and ITS sequences) and performed morphological analyses. Both phylogenetic analyses robustly supported that Acronema was a non-monophyletic group that fell into two clades: Acronema Clade and East-Asia Clade. We also newly sequenced and assembled sixteen Acronema complete plastomes and performed comprehensively comparative analyses for this genus. The comparative results showed that the plastome structure, gene number, GC content, codon bias patterns were high similarity, but varied in borders of SC/IR. The SC/IR boundaries of Acronema chienii were significantly different from the other Acronema members. We also identified twelve potential DNA barcode regions (ccsA, matK, ndhF, ndhG, psaI, psbI, rpl32, rps15, ycf1, ycf3, psaI-ycf4 and psbM-trnD) for species identification in Acronema. The molecular evolution of Acronema was relatively conservative that only one gene (petG) was found to be under positive selection (ω = 1.02489). The gene petG is one of the genes involved in the transmission of photosynthetic electron chains during photosynthesis, which plays a crucial role in the process of photosynthesis in plants. This is also a manifestation of the adaptive evolution of plants in high-altitude areas to the environment. In conclusion, our study provides novel insights into the plastome adaptive evolution, phylogeny, and taxonomy of genus Acronema.

    Keywords: Apiaceae, Acronema, adaptive evolution, DNA barcoding, phylogeny, Plastome, Taxonomy Adaptive evolution, Taxonomy

    Received: 29 Apr 2024; Accepted: 24 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Chen, Song, Yang, Wang, Wang, Aou, HE and Zhou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Song-Dong Zhou, College of Life Science, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

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