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Plant genetics

The chromosome hoarding syndrome of (some) ferns and lycophytes

Nature Reviews Genetics volume 24, page 737 (2023)Cite this article

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My PhD advisor, Michael Windham, always had a purplish tint on his right thumb from the acetocarmine stain he used to prepare chromosome squashes. Mike is one of the few to have mastered this art of flattening plant cells on a microscopic slide to visualize chromosomes. This technique is especially tricky when it comes to ferns and lycophytes — collectively called pteridophytes — a paraphyletic group of spore-bearing vascular plants whose chromosomes are small and numerous: the average 2n count is 84.5 and can go all the way to a whopping 1,400! It is not an easy feat to evenly spread out all these chromosomes and make an accurate count. The genomes of pteridophytes are humongous as well, with an average size >10 Gb, which is an order of magnitude larger than the Arabidopsis genome.

However, not all pteridophytes exhibit a high number of chromosomes and large genomes. In a landmark 1966 paper, Klekowski and Baker first noted a stark contrast between homosporous and heterosporous lineages in pteridophytes. Heterosporous species, which produce separate micro- and macrospores that develop into male and female gametophytes, respectively, possess considerably fewer chromosomes compared to homosporous species. In fact, the average chromosome number range of heterosporous pteridophytes is more comparable to that of seed plants, which are also heterosporous. It is the homosporous species that exhibit an overall increase in average chromosome numbers.

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References

Original article

  • Klekowski, E. J. & Baker, H. G. Evolutionary significance of polyploidy in the Pteridophyta. Science 153, 305–307 (1966)

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Related article

  • Wolf, P. G. et al. Electrophoretic evidence for genetic diploidy in the bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum). Science 236, 947–949 (1987)

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Boyce Thompson Institute, and Plant Biology Section, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Fay-Wei Li

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  1. Fay-Wei Li
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Correspondence to Fay-Wei Li.

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Li, FW. The chromosome hoarding syndrome of (some) ferns and lycophytes. Nat Rev Genet 24, 737 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41576-023-00639-0

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