Phylogeny of the genus Pistacia as determined from analysis of the chloroplast genome

Abstract

Classification within the genus Pistacia has been based on leaf morphology and geographical distribution. Molecular genetic tools (PCR amplification followed by restriction analysis of a 3.2-kb region of variable chloroplast DNA, and restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis of the Pistacia cpDNA with tobacco chloroplast DNA probes) provided a new set of variables to study the phylogenetic relationships of 10 Pistacia species. Both parsimony and cluster analyses were used to divide the genus into two major groups. P. vera was determined to be the least derived species. P. weinmannifolia, an Asian species, is most closely related to P. texana and P. mexicana, New World species. These three species share a common origin, suggesting that a common ancestor of P. texana and P. mexicana originated in Asia. P. integerrima and P. chinensis were shown to be distinct whereas the pairs of species were monophyletic within each of two tertiary groups, P. vera:P. khinjuk and P. mexicana:P. texana. An evolutionary trend from large to small nuts and leaves with few, large leaf lets to many, small leaf lets was supported. The genus Pistacia was shown to have a low chloroplast DNA mutation rate: 0.05-0.16 times that expected of annual plants.

Retrotransposon Marker Systems as a Tool to Analyze Molecular Diversity of Mediterranean Pistacia Species

“…We found that P. vera and P. khinjuk were closely related with each other as consistent with the previous studies by using RAPD (Kafkas and Perl-Treves, 2002;Golan-Goldhirsh et al, 2004) and AFLP (Golan-Goldhirsh et al, 2004) marker systems also showing a high bootstrapping clustering ratio (Kafkas and Perl-Treves, 2002). Restriction analyses of chloroplast genome (Parfitt and Badenes, 1997) together with NIA-i3, ITS and plastid genes (Yi et al, 2008) demonstrated the closer relationship between these two species. It is known that P. khinjuk not only shares the dispersion locations (Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Egypt) but also it shows similar morphological variation patterns with P. vera (Zohary, 1952).…”

“…However, there was an ongoing debate about classification of P atlantica in a separate section Butmela which was classified by Zohary (1952), because of rachis wing character. Parfitt and Badenes (1997) suggested that the Butmela section could be eliminated and merged with section Terebinthus. On the contrary, Golan-Goldhirsh et al (2004) found that P. atlantica clustered in a separate section and suggested that Butmela section could not be eliminated.…”

“…Lately with 19 different morphological markers, Al-Saghir and Porter (2012) revised the status of the genus and clustered the species in 2 main sections. In addition various molecular characterization studies were also carried on different species, cultivars and accessions of Pistacia including RAPD (Kafkas and Perl-Treves, 2001;Kafkas and PerlTreves, 2002;Katsiotis et al, 2003;Golan-Goldhirsh et al, 2004), AFLP (Katsiotis et al, 2003;Golan-Goldhirsh et al, 2004;Kafkas, 2006;Karimi et al, 2009), ISSR (Kafkas, 2006), SSR, SRAP (Talebi et al, 2012), IRAP (Ghaemmaghami et al, 2013) and restriction analysis of chloroplast fragments (Parfitt and Badenes, 1997) in order to resolve the phylogenetic relationships. These studies were mostly dealt with classification of Pistacia species, which were originated from Middle East region and tried to classify either 4 (as Lenticella, Eu-Lentiscus, Butmela and Eu-Terebinthus) or 2 (as Terebinthus and Lentiscus) groups.…”

Sycophila pistacina (Hymenoptera: Eurytomidae): A valid species

“…Its life-cycle and reproductive strategy retain archaic features characteristic of tropical plants (Verdú & García-Fayos, 2002). In addition, the genus Pistacia supposedly originated from Central Asia (Parfitt & Badenes, 1997). Conversely, European deciduous oaks are important components of temperate forests.…”

Genetic relationships among Pistacia species studied by SAMPL markers

“…Because of these factors high selectivity in rootstocks breeding is required, and therefore knowledge of the genetic relationships among Pistacia species would be very useful in pistachio rootstock breeding. Different markers have been used for studying Pistacia species and pistachio cultivars (Karimi et al 2009a;Kafkas 2006;Ahmad et al 2003;Katsiotis et al 2003;Parfitt and Badenes 1997), but no study has been reported in which the SAMPL (selective amplification of microsatellite polymorphic loci) marker technique was used. SAMPL is a modified amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) technique in which a compound microsatellite sequence is used as one of the two AFLP primers in selective amplification (Witssenboer et al 1997), generally in place of EcoRI primers.…”