BackgroundBambusoideae (Poaceae) comprise three distinct and well-supported lineages: tropical woody bamboos (Bambuseae), temperate woody bamboos (Arundinarieae) and herbaceous bamboos (Olyreae). Phylogenetic studies using chloroplast markers have generally supported a sister relationship between Bambuseae and Olyreae. This suggests either at least two origins of the woody bamboo syndrome in this subfamily or its loss in Olyreae.ResultsHere a full chloroplast genome (plastome) phylogenomic study is presented using the coding and noncoding regions of 13 complete plastomes from the Bambuseae, eight from Olyreae and 10 from Arundinarieae. Trees generated using full plastome sequences support the previously recovered monophyletic relationship between Bambuseae and Olyreae. In addition to these relationships, several unique plastome features are uncovered including the first mitogenome-to-plastome horizontal gene transfer observed in monocots.ConclusionsPhylogenomic agreement with previous published phylogenies reinforces the validity of these studies. Additionally, this study presents the first published plastomes from Neotropical woody bamboos and the first full plastome phylogenomic study performed within the herbaceous bamboos. Although the phylogenomic tree presented in this study is largely robust, additional studies using nuclear genes support monophyly in woody bamboos as well as hybridization among previous woody bamboo lineages. The evolutionary history of the Bambusoideae could be further clarified using transcriptomic techniques to increase sampling among nuclear orthologues and investigate the molecular genetics underlying the development of woody and floral tissues.KeywordsPoaceae Bambusoideae Bamboos Phylogenomics Plastome Organellar HGT Chloroplast genomeBackgroundBambusoideae are a lineage of perennial forest grasses (Poaceae) endemic to every continent except Europe and Antarctica [1,2]. The Bambusoideae comprise 115 genera and approximately 1450 species of bamboos [1]. Bambusoideae are divided into two morphologically distinct habits: woody and herbaceous bamboos. While woody bamboos display a wide range of morphological diversity, they do possess multiple shared characteristics. The woody bamboo syndrome includes strongly lignified culms, specialized culm leaves, complex vegetative branching, outer ligules on the foliage leaves, bisexual flowers, and gregarious monocarpy [1]. These bamboos, some of which can quickly grow up to 45 m in height, serve as an economically important source of building materials and other products for cultures in Central and South America, Asia, Africa, and Australia [3]. Their potential for rapid establishment combined with their extensive vegetative reproduction also make bamboos important ecologically as they can serve as forest habitats of their own and can affect the survival of sympatric woody species [4]. The gregarious, semelparous flowering patterns of woody bamboos and subsequent death of the parent plant can have ecological effects such as the increase in pest populations during the fruiting of Melocanna baccifera in regions of India [5] and the increase in eudicot sapling growth during the die-off of the dominant forest bamboo Chusquea culeou [6]. This pattern of flowering is correlated with increased generation times in this group, which in turn is correlated in bamboos and other grasses with shorter branch lengths in phylogenetic analyses [7] and fewer resolved nodes between certain closely related species.Herbaceous bamboos are characterized by shorter and more weakly lignified shoots, less vegetative branching, unisexual flowers, and annual or seasonal flowering patterns [1]. The flowering phenology of herbaceous bamboos is correlated with an increase in the substitution rates observed in chloroplast loci. This has at least two consequences relevant to bambusoid plastome phylogenomics. First, phylogenetic resolution and support within this group are likely to be increased due to higher numbers of informative sites. At the same time, long branches are produced with the potential for long-branch attraction artifacts between herbaceous bamboos and non-bambusoid outgroups. Phylogenomic results can be more realistically interpreted taking these effects into account.Molecular studies have placed Bambusoideae in the BEP (Bambusoideae, Ehrhartoideae, Pooideae) clade of Poaceae. A sister group relationship between Bambusoideae and Pooideae has been strongly supported [8,9] although morphological synapomorphies have yet to be found that unite these two subfamilies. Bambusoideae can be divided into three well-supported monophyletic tribes: the woody Arundinarieae and Bambuseae, and the herbaceous Olyreae [1].The Bambuseae are native to tropical areas in both the Old and New World. This tribe comprises two clades that correspond to Old and New World species [2,10]. Phylogenetic studies that use plastid markers generally place Olyreae as the sister group to Bambuseae in well-supported trees [2,11,12]. Olyreae are exclusively distributed in the New World except for Buergersiochloa bambusoides, a species endemic to New Guinea, and Olyra latifolia, which is found widely distributed in Africa/Madagascar as well as in the New World [13]. However, the African origin of the O. latifolia population has been debated [14]. Like the Bambuseae, the Arundinarieae include woody bamboos found in both the Old and New World, with a basically Laurasian distribution pattern, but unlike most Bambuseae they are well-adapted to temperate environments.
Although paraphyly of the woody syndrome in Bambusoideae is well supported by tree analyses that use maternally inherited chloroplast phylogenetic markers [8], this has been a subject of debate. Network analyses have revealed that the phylogenetic placement of Olyreae is less certain than previously reported [2]. This is also because to be consistent with the chloroplast phylogeny, the woody bamboo syndrome would have either evolved twice independently (once in each of the ancestors of the Bambuseae and Arundinarieae) or arisen once in the common ancestor of the Bambusoideae and then subsequently been lost in the Olyreae. A hypothesized single origin of the woody bamboo syndrome, which has been most recently supported by Triplett et al. [15], is evolutionarily more parsimonious than these scenarios.
In the past three years, full plastome phylogenomic analyses have been used to address evolutionary problems in the Bambusoideae. These analyses have been variously applied in Bambusoideae to resolve subfamilial relationships [9,16,17] and investigate biogeographical patterns [12,18]. Full plastome analysis can also provide enough information to resolve difficult interspecific relationships. This is an issue that is especially relevant to woody bamboos, which generally hybridize readily and exhibit very long generation times [19,20]. While studies such as Kelchner et al. [2] and Triplett & Clark [21] have used selected chloroplast markers to infer maternally inherited evolutionary signal within Bambusoideae, our objective is to use all coding and non-coding regions within the chloroplast to increase the number of informative sites. Here, a full plastome phylogeny was generated using 13 tropical woody species, 10 temperate woody species and eight herbaceous species with 17 newly sequenced and 15 existing bambusoid plastomes plus two outgroup plastomes.
Results
Assembly and alignment of plastomes
Read and contig assembly yielded complete plastomes for 18 bamboos and one ehrhartoid grass. Plastome lengths ranged from 135,320—143,810 base pairs (bp). Lengths of each plastome region are reported in Table 1. A multi-plastome sequence alignment was 132,707 bp in length after excluding one of the major inverted repeat (IR) regions. Removal of alignment columns containing gaps reduced the alignment length to 97,593 bp. The sequence alignment containing only protein coding regions was 54,548 bp in length and 52,941 bp after removal of gapped positions. See Table 2 for more information on sequencing techniques and results.
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