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JXB Advance Access published online on December 3, 2008
Journal of Experimental Botany, doi:10.1093/jxb/ern304
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© The Author [2008]. Published by Oxford University Press [on behalf of the Society for Experimental Biology]. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

REVIEW-ARTICLE

Lepidium as a model system for studying the evolution of fruit development in Brassicaceae

Klaus Mummenhoff1, Alexander Polster1 *, Andreas Mühlhausen1 and Günter Theißen2,{dagger}

1University of Osnabrück, Department of Biology, Botany, Barbarastrasse 11, D-49076 Osnabrück, Germany
2Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Department of Genetics, Philosophenweg 12, D-07743 Jena, Germany

{dagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed: E-mail: guenter.theissen{at}uni-jena.de

Fruits represent a key innovation of the flowering plants that facilitates seed dispersal. In many species of the plant family Brassicaceae dehiscent fruits develop in which seed dispersal occurs through a process termed ‘pod-shatter’. In the case of dehiscence, the fruit opens during fruit maturation. Phylogeny reconstructions using molecular markers indicate that the development of dehiscent fruits is the ancestral condition within the genus Lepidium s.l., but that indehiscent fruits evolved independently several times from dehiscent fruits. With Lepidium campestre and Cardaria pubescens (also known as Lepidium appelianum), very closely related taxa with dehiscent and indehiscent fruits, respectively, were identified which constitute a well-suited model system to determine the molecular genetic basis of evolutionary changes in fruit dehiscence. Following the rationale of evolutionary developmental biology (‘evo-devo’) phylomimicking mutants with indehiscent fruits of the close relative Arabidopsis have been used to define the candidate genes ALC, FUL, IND, RPL, and SHP1/2 which might be involved in the origin of indehiscent fruits in Cardaria. Comparative expression studies in L. campestre and C. pubescens are used to identify differentially expressed genes and thus to narrow down the number of candidate genes. Reciprocal heterologous transformation experiments may help us to distinguish direct from indirect developmental genetic causes of fruit indehiscence, and to assess the contribution of cis- and trans-regulatory changes.

Key words: Arabidopsis, Brassicaceae, Cardaria, character evolution, genetic regulation, Lepidium, pod-shatter, phylomimicking mutant

* Present address: Hannover Medical School, Centre for Physiology, Carl-Neuberg-Str.1, D-30625 Hannover, Germany.

Received 12 September 2008; Revised 31 October 2008 Accepted 10 November 2008


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