Molecular phylogeny and evolution of alcohol dehydrogenase (Adh) genes in legumes.
BACKGROUND
Nuclear genes determine the vast range of phenotypes that are responsible for the adaptive abilities of organisms in nature. Nevertheless, the evolutionary processes that generate the structures and functions of nuclear genes are only now be coming understood. The aim of our study is to isolate the alcohol dehydrogenase (Adh) genes in two distantly related legumes, and use these sequences to examine the molecular evolutionary history of this nuclear gene.


RESULTS
We isolated the expressed Adh genes from two species of legumes, Sophora flavescens Ait. and Wisteria floribunda DC., by a RT-PCR based approach and found a new Adh locus in addition to homologues of the Adh genes found previously in legumes. To examine the evolution of these genes, we compared the species and gene trees and found gene duplication of the Adh loci in the legumes occurred as an ancient event.


CONCLUSIONS
This is the first report revealing that some legume species have at least two Adh gene loci belonging to separate clades. Phylogenetic analyses suggest that these genes resulted from relatively ancient duplication events.
Fukuda
Tatsuya
T
Graduate School of Life Sciences, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8577, Japan. fukuda@ige.tohoku.ac.jp
Yokoyama
Jun
J
Nakamura
Toru
T
Song
In-Ja
IJ
Ito
Takuro
T
Ochiai
Toshinori
T
Kanno
Akira
A
Kameya
Toshiaki
T
Maki
Masayuki
M
D000426:Alcohol Dehydrogenase / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D019295:Computational Biology; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D017343:Genes, Plant; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D005810:Multigene Family / Q000235:genetics; D010802:Phylogeny; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D020539:Sequence Analysis, Protein; D029909:Sophora / Q000201:enzymology / Q000235:genetics*; D032447:Wisteria / Q000201:enzymology / Q000235:genetics*
D000426:Alcohol Dehydrogenase