Chromosome numbers and polyploidy events in Korean non-commelinids monocots: A contribution to plant systematics

Abstract

The evolution of chromosome numbers and the karyotype structure is a prominent feature of plant genomes contributing to or at least accompanying plant diversification and eventually leading to speciation. Polyploidy, the multiplication of whole chromosome sets, is widespread and ploidy-level variation is frequent at all taxonomic levels, including species and populations, in angiosperms. Analyses of chromosome numbers and ploidy levels of 252 taxa of Korean non-commelinid monocots indicated that diploids (ca. 44%) and tetraploids (ca. 14%) prevail, with fewer triploids (ca. 6%), pentaploids (ca. 2%), and hexaploids (ca. 4%) being found. The range of genome sizes of the analyzed taxa (0.3–44.5 pg/1C) falls well within that reported in the Plant DNA C-values database (0.061–152.33 pg/1C). Analyses of karyotype features in angiosperm often involve, in addition to chromosome numbers and genome sizes, mapping of selected repetitive DNAs in chromosomes. All of these data when interpreted in a phylogenetic context allow for the addressing of evolutionary questions concerning the large-scale evolution of the genomes as well as the evolution of individual repeat types, especially ribosomal DNAs (5S and 35S rDNAs), and other tandem and dispersed repeats that can be identified in any plant genome at a relatively low cost using next-generation sequencing technologies. The present work investigates chromosome numbers (n or 2n), base chromosome numbers (x), ploidy levels, rDNA loci numbers, and genome size data to gain insight into the incidence, evolution and significance of polyploidy in Korean monocots.