TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kappel, Christian
A1  - Cuong Nguyen Huu, 
A1  - Lenhard, Michael
T1  - A short story gets longer: recent insights into the molecular basis of heterostyly
JF  - Journal of experimental botany
N2  - Heterostyly is a fascinating adaptation to promote outbreeding and a classical paradigm of botany. In the most common type of heterostyly, plants either form flowers with long styles and short stamens, or short styles and long stamens. This reciprocal organ positioning reduces pollen wastage and promotes cross-pollination, thus increasing male fitness. In addition, in many heterostylous species selfing and the generation of unfit progeny due to inbreeding depression is limited by a self-incompatibility system, thus promoting female fitness. The two floral forms are genetically determined by the S locus as a complex supergene, namely a chromosomal region containing several individual genes that control the different traits, such as style or stamen length, and are held together by very tight linkage due to suppressed recombination. Recent molecular-genetic studies in several systems, including Turnera, Fagopyrum, Linum, and Primula have begun to identify and characterize the causal heterostyly genes residing at the S locus. An emerging theme from several families is that the dominant S haplotype represents a hemizygous region not present on the recessive s haplotype. This provides an explanation for the suppressed recombination and suggests a scenario for the chromosomal evolution of the S locus. In this review, we discuss the results from recent molecular-genetic analyses in light of the classical models on the genetics and evolution of heterostyly.
KW  - CYP734A50
KW  - distyly
KW  - GLOBOSA2
KW  - hemizygosity
KW  - heterostyly
KW  - Primula
KW  - S locus
KW  - supergene
KW  - tristyly
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1093/jxb/erx387
SN  - 0022-0957
SN  - 1460-2431
VL  - 68
SP  - 5719
EP  - 5730
PB  - Oxford Univ. Press
CY  - Oxford
ER  -