GC content, genome size and chromosome size evolution in grasses and other monocots

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Authors	ŠMARDA Petr BUREŠ Petr HOROVÁ Lucie
Year of publication	2008
Type	Conference abstract
MU Faculty or unit	Faculty of Science
Citation
Description	Compared to other angiosperms, grass genomes (Poaceae) highly vary in base composition and have considerably higher GC (guanine + cytosine) content. The base composition varies generally with the content of various genome components, and with direction of mutational pressure. Both processes may relate to over 60-fold differences in genome and chromosome sizes found in grasses, and to evolutionary success of grasses in various extreme environments. Here we discuss evolutionary consequences of genome size, chromosome size and GC content in Eurasian species of Festuca genus, across subfamilies Pooideae, Bambusoideae and Oryzoideae, and among various monocots families. We show that in addition to conventional genome size data the GC content may represent another usefull character in taxa delimitation and in understanding the long-term processes of genome evolution.
Related projects:	Diversity of Biotic Communities and Populations: Causal Analysis of variation in space and time Biodiversity Research Center GC content and genome evolution of grasses