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The earliest angiosperms: evidence from mitochondrial, plastid and nuclear genomes

Nature volume 402, pages 404–407 (1999)Cite this article

An Erratum to this article was published on 04 May 2000

Abstract

Angiosperms have dominated the Earth's vegetation since the mid-Cretaceous (90 million years ago)1, providing much of our food, fibre, medicine and timber, yet their origin and early evolution have remained enigmatic for over a century2,3,4,5,6,7,8. One part of the enigma lies in the difficulty of identifying the earliest angiosperms; the other involves the uncertainty regarding the sister group of angiosperms among extant and fossil gymnosperms. Here we report a phylogenetic analysis of DNA sequences of five mitochondrial, plastid and nuclear genes (total aligned length 8,733 base pairs), from all basal angiosperm and gymnosperm lineages (105 species, 103 genera and 63 families). Our study demonstrates that Amborella, Nymphaeales and Illiciales-Trimeniaceae-Austrobaileya represent the first stage of angiosperm evolution, with Amborella being sister to all other angiosperms. We also show that Gnetales are related to the conifers and are not sister to the angiosperms, thus refuting the Anthophyte Hypothesis1. These results have far-reaching implications for our understanding of diversification, adaptation, genome evolution and development of the angiosperms.

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Figure 1: The single most parsimonious tree found in the five-gene DNA sequence analysis (tree length, 13,240 steps; consistency index, 0.413; retention index, 0.604).
Figure 2: The portion of the aligned matrix from mitochondrial matR showing the INDEL that distinguishes euangiosperms (top block) from ANITA (middle block) and gymnosperms (bottom block).

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Acknowledgements

We thank C. D. K. Cook, M. E. Endress, P. K. Endress, E. M. Friis, O. Nandi and R. Rutishauser for critical reading of the manuscript, R. Collett, A. Floyd, B. Hall and S. S. Renner for plant material, and the Swiss NF and US NSF for financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Systematic Botany, University of Zurich, Zollikerstrasse 107, Zurich, 8008, Switzerland

    Yin-Long Qiu, Jungho Lee, Fabiana Bernasconi-Quadroni & Zhiduan Chen

  2. School of Biological Sciences, Washington State University, Pullman, 99164-4236, Washington, USA

    Douglas E. Soltis, Pamela S. Soltis & Michael Zanis

  3. Laboratory of Molecular Systematics, Smithsonian Institution, 20560, Washington DC, USA

    Elizabeth A. Zimmer

  4. Jodrell Laboratory Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 3DS, UK

    Vincent Savolainen & Mark W. Chase

  5. Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China

    Zhiduan Chen

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Correspondence to Yin-Long Qiu.

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Qiu, YL., Lee, J., Bernasconi-Quadroni, F. et al. The earliest angiosperms: evidence from mitochondrial, plastid and nuclear genomes. Nature 402, 404–407 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/46536

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