Comparison of a Brassica oleracea Genetic Map With the Genome of Arabidopsis thaliana

Corresponding author: Lewis Lukens, Crop Science Bldg., University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada., llukens{at}uoguelph.ca (E-mail)

Communicating editor: O. SAVOLAINEN

	ABSTRACT

TOP ABSTRACT MATERIALS AND METHODS RESULTS DISCUSSION LITERATURE CITED

Brassica oleracea is closely related to the model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana. Despite this relationship, it has been difficult to both identify the most closely related segments between the genomes and determine the degree of genome replication within B. oleracea relative to A. thaliana. These difficulties have arisen in part because both species have replicated genomes, and the criteria used to identify orthologous regions between the genomes are often ambiguous. In this report, we compare the positions of sequenced Brassica loci with a known position on a B. oleracea genetic map to the positions of their putative orthologs within the A. thaliana genome. We use explicit criteria to distinguish orthologous from paralogous loci. In addition, we develop a conservative algorithm to identify collinear loci between the genomes and a permutation test to evaluate the significance of these regions. The algorithm identified 34 significant A. thaliana regions that are collinear with >28% of the B. oleracea genetic map. These regions have a mean of 3.3 markers spanning 2.1 Mbp of the A. thaliana genome and 2.5 cM of the B. oleracea genetic map. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the B. oleracea genome has been highly rearranged since divergence from A. thaliana, likely as a result of polyploidization.

ONE major goal of plant biologists is to compare the genomic information available from model species to other, nonmodel species for which genetic maps are available. If genome structures are highly conserved, candidate genes in the model species that correspond to loci mapped in the nonmodel species can be quickly identified. In addition, differences between the nonmodel genome and model genome can be used to infer the frequency of genome duplications and rearrangements over time.

The genus Brassica is an excellent system with which to develop tools for genome comparison and to examine the divergence of genome structure. Brassica species are closely related to the model plant species, Arabidopsis thaliana. Both Brassica and Arabidopsis are classified within the same family, the Brassicaceae, and diverged 20 MYA (KOCH et al. 2000 ). Brassica oleracea (including broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, and kale) and its related crop species (including B. napus and B. rapa) have also been extensively studied genetically, and several molecular maps for B. oleracea and other species within the genera have been published (e.g., KIANIN and QUIROS 1992; CAMARGO et al. 1997 ; BOHUON et al. 1998 ; LAN and PATERSON 2000 ).

Despite the close relationship between Brassica species and A. thaliana, whole-genome mapping studies have found that the order of loci in Brassica genetic maps is only infrequently similar to the order of homologous loci in the A. thaliana genome (KOWALSKI et al. 1994 ; LAGERCRANTZ 1998 ; LAN et al. 2000 ). Comparative studies of smaller genomic intervals have revealed more evidence for collinearity, but extensive deletions and genome rearrangements are still evident. CAVELL et al. 1998 reported shared marker order and content between a 7.5-Mbp region of A. thaliana chromosome 4 with B. napus, and PARKIN et al. 2002 and SCHRANZ et al. 2002 have observed a high degree of collinearity between A. thaliana chromosome 5 and three chromosomal regions of diploid Brassica species. The order of loci within one 10-cM region within B. oleracea is well conserved in A. thaliana (RYDER et al. 2001 ), and many genes within a 222-kb interval of A. thaliana chromosome 4 hybridize to the same or contiguous bacterial artificial chromosomes (BACs) in B. oleracea (O'NEILL and BANCROFT 2000 ). However, RYDER et al. 2001 found that many regions of the B. oleracea genetic map did not have a clear relationship to the A. thaliana genome, and O'NEILL and BANCROFT 2000 found that several genes within the 222-kb A. thaliana interval were not found in the homologous region of B. oleracea.

The conserved and rearranged regions between Brassica and Arabidopsis genomes have been interpreted in different ways, leading to fundamental disagreements about Brassica genome structure. LAGERCRANTZ 1998 suggested that the base diploid Brassica genome evolved from an ancient hexaploid with three highly rearranged A. thaliana-like genomes. LAN et al. 2000 , supporting earlier cytogenetical studies (e.g., HAGA 1938 ), found much stronger support for the hypothesis that the base Brassica genome is largely composed of duplicated regions.

Some of the difficulties in resolving intergenomic relationships and shared orthologous regions have arisen because genome replication confounds orthologous and paralogous relationships between loci (Fig 1A). The A. thaliana genome is partially duplicated (ARABIDOPSIS GENOME INITIATIVE 2000), and Brassica sequences can detect paralogous A. thaliana duplicates (PARKIN 2000 ). To identify the region from A. thaliana that most likely has the same gene content as a region of B. oleracea, one must identify the orthologous, not paralogous, loci within the A. thaliana genome (Fig 1B). Paralogy may further complicate genome comparisons because a probe may hybridize and be mapped to an ancient, paralogous locus within the Brassica genome. If one subsequently uses this probe for comparative mapping, this probe will likely identify its ortholog, and one may incorrectly associate two genome intervals. Although a single B. oleracea region may be orthologous to a single region within Arabidopsis, the probes that identified this region in B. oleracea may be orthologous to loci in different, duplicated regions within the A. thaliana genome, giving the appearance of (nonexistent) genome rearrangements (Fig 1C; I. PARKIN, unpublished data).

View larger version (20K): In this window In a new window Download PPT slide   Figure 1. Gene duplications and loosely linked markers complicate comparative mapping. (A) Hypothetical gene (thin line) and species (thick line) phylogeny for Arabidopsis thaliana and Brassica oleracea. In this scenario, a duplication event occurred prior to the divergence of both species (LYNCH and CONERY 2000 ; KOCH et al. 2001 ). (B) If Brassica sequences falsely detect A. thaliana sequences as orthologous, regions between the genomes (i.e., A1' and A2) can be falsely associated. (C) If intragenomic paralogous sequences are mapped in B. oleracea, a single linkage group may be incorrectly inferred to be orthologous with different regions of A. thaliana. (D) Brassica sequences that are closely linked may detect distantly linked sequences in A. thaliana that are not true orthologs.

Finally, the lack of explicit criteria when evaluating putative orthologous regions and the potential for bias when making genome comparisons can lead to misclassification of intergenomic relationships (BENNETZEN 2000 ; GAUT 2001 ). In published comparisons between the Brassica and A. thaliana genomes, clear orthologous regions have been identified by the presence of several shared loci that are closely linked within both species. However, additional orthologous regions are inferred by a single marker or a small number of markers that are linked in both genomes but lie far from each other (Fig 1D; e.g., RYDER et al. 2001 ). It is difficult to evaluate whether such associations are due to chance alone.

Here, we report on a comparison between a genetic map of B. oleracea and the A. thaliana genome using approaches that reduce the confounding effect of paralogous sequences. In addition, we developed an algorithm written in PERL that uses explicit criteria to identify orthologous regions and to establish their significance. Consistent with previous reports, we found evidence for substantial genomic replication in B. oleracea as compared to A. thaliana and found evidence that multiple chromosomal rearrangements have occurred since the species' divergence. However, we also found that the B. oleracea genetic map and the A. thaliana genome sequence share 34 significant, collinear regions. The average putative orthologous segment has 3.3 markers corresponding to 2.1 Mbp in A. thaliana and 7.1 cM in B. oleracea. In total, the significant regions identified in this study cover well over one-fourth of the B. oleracea genome. Of 22 previously published regions of predicted orthology, our algorithm identified 20, 17 of which were significant at P < 0.05.

Our data suggest three separate inferences. First, in general, published reports of collinear regions appear to have sampled highly conserved areas between the Brassica and A. thaliana genomes. Second, different interpretations of Brassica genome structure may have arisen because of different criteria used to define homologous regions between Brassica and A. thaliana. Finally, differences in the genomic arrangements between A. thaliana and B. oleracea appear to be due to the recent history of polyploidy in B. oleracea.

	MATERIALS AND METHODS

TOP ABSTRACT MATERIALS AND METHODS RESULTS DISCUSSION LITERATURE CITED

A. thaliana sequence information source and B. oleracea map source:
The B. oleracea genetic map was developed by BOHUON et al. 1998 from a highly polymorphic cross between a double-haploid (DH) line of B. oleracea ssp. italica with a DH line of B. oleracea ssp. alboglabra.

The sequences of BACs used to assemble the A. thaliana genome sequence were downloaded from TIGR, http://www.tigr.org, on May 20, 2001. The number of nucleotides within all BACs totaled 132,101,284 bp. Dr. Eva Huala (Arabidopsis Information Resource) kindly provided the order of BACs and the estimated starting and ending position for each BAC within the A. thaliana genome on February 15, 2001. The nucleotide positions of BACs within the genome are estimates.

Sequencing and plasmid insert information:
Brassica DNA mapping fragments were cloned into a pUC18-derived plasmid, pIJ2925, and two sequences were obtained for each clone. Most of these clones contain PstI fragments of genomic DNA, although a few pW clones contain EcoRI genomic DNA fragments, and all have been used in mapping experiments. They are present in low-copy number within the Brassica genome with a mean of 1.8 polymorphic loci in B. oleracea. Sequencing reactions were performed using ABI Big-Dye Terminator cycle sequencing reagents. Reactions contained the ABI mix, ddH20, 500 ng of plasmid DNA, and 3.2 pmol of M13 forward or reverse primer to a final volume of 20 µl. The cycle-sequencing conditions were as follows: 25 cycles for 10 sec at 95°, 5 sec at 50°, and 4 min at 60°. Unincorporated nucleotides were removed by passing the reaction mixture through a Sephadex G-50 column. Sequence reactions were analyzed with an automated DNA sequencer (ABI model 377XL or 377-96) and base-pair calls were confirmed by visual inspection of chromatograms.

To identify molecular markers that had similar sequences but different names, we used blastn (ALTSCHUL et al. 1997 ) from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) to perform all pairwise comparisons between Brassica marker sequences. The following markers shared highly similar sequences: pW177 and pW148, pN3 and pW200, pN53 and pN96, and pW120 and pW101. If two or more similar markers were placed on the B. oleracea genetic map in the same or adjacent positions, one of the markers was removed from the analysis. Many of the marker sequences were similar to putative coding sequences within A. thaliana, and it is likely that a large portion of potentially orthologous noncoding sequences were omitted due to low blast scores (e.g., QUIROS et al. 2001 ). A rigorous classification of marker sequences as coding or noncoding from our preliminary sequence data was difficult because the B. oleracea genome likely contains a large number of pseudogenes relative to A. thaliana (e.g., QUIROS et al. 2001 ).

BLAST analysis:
To identify BACs with nucleotide sequences similar to the Brassica query sequences, we used blastn. Low-complexity sequences were filtered in the blast analysis, and default values for cost (mismatch cost = -3.0), reward (match reward = 1.0), and word size (11 bp) were selected. The default gap opening penalty (5.0) and the gap extension penalty (2.0) were also selected. We recorded the bit score to evaluate sequence relationships. We did not align A. thaliana and Brassica sequences by eye in order to calculate additional sequence distances or other statistics. The number of marker sequences and the number of detected homologs in A. thaliana made such an approach impractical.

The results from the blastn analysis were parsed using a spreadsheet and short PERL scripts that we wrote for this purpose. From each "hit" to the A. thaliana BAC database by a Brassica query sequence, we retrieved the BAC name, the bit score, and the significance value. The nucleotide start position of the BAC was used as the approximate position of the Brassica query sequence in the A. thaliana genome. If both sequences from the same fragment detected the same BAC, only the highest scoring match was kept. Additional parsing was done to remove redundant data. If a query sequence had significant sequence similarity to BACs that overlapped (had overlapping base-pair intervals) or were immediately adjacent to each other (had shared beginning or ending nucleotide positions), a single BAC that was assigned the lower nucleotide position in the chromosome was recorded. This procedure would cause local/tandem duplications of a single gene within A. thaliana to be defined as a single locus. The raw and parsed data sets can be downloaded from http://www.plant.uoguelph.ca/faculty/llukens.

Collinearity analysis:
"Conserved linkage" or "collinearity" (EHRLICH et al. 1997 ; GAUT 2001 ), the conservation of both synteny and order of orthologous loci between two species, can be used as a principle to compare the relatedness of genomes. We wrote PERL scripts to identify such collinear regions between B. oleracea and A. thaliana using two different definitions of collinearity. The first, "strict" definition defines two or more loci shared between genomes as collinear only if the loci are found on the same linkage group within each species and if the order of loci is the same in both species. The second, "general" definition was proposed by GAUT 2001 . Under the general definition, collinear segments are defined as a series of uninterrupted markers within one chromosome [or linkage group (LG)], the "standard," that is found in a common orientation in the second chromosome (or LG), the "tester." In this case, the order of loci is not necessarily the same between the standard and the tester chromosome. In a comparison between B. oleracea LG 7 (designated O7) and A. thaliana chromosome (ch.) 5 (designated At5), the differences between the strict and general definitions can be seen (Fig 2A). Using the general definition, the identity of a collinear region may differ depending on which chromosome is the standard and which is the tester (compare Fig 2A TO 2B).

View larger version (37K): In this window In a new window Download PPT slide   Figure 2. Comparison of Brassica oleracea O7 and Arabidopsis thaliana At5 showing characteristics of the strict and general (Gen.) collinearity definitions. Collinear regions are identified by vertical lines. Nested collinear runs are identified and evaluated by the algorithm but for clarity are not shown here. (A) The physical order of the BACs within the "standard" A. thaliana chromosome is compared with the rank order of markers within the "tester" B. oleracea linkage group. (B) The genetic order of the markers within the standard B. oleracea linkage group is compared with the rank order of BACs within the tester A. thaliana chromosome. *, statistical significance at P 0.05; **, statistical significance at P 0.01.

Our method to assess the significance of an observed collinear region using both definitions is based on the approach outlined by GAUT 2001 but has major modifications (see DISCUSSION). If a collinear region with n shared markers was detected, it was scored. The scoring metric S(n) is defined as the average distance (in centimorgans) between the loci within the collinear region: that is,

A is the approximate distance (in kilobases) between the outermost loci detected within a collinear region in A. thaliana. The term R is the mean ratio of genetic distance (centimorgans) to physical distance (kilobases) for the A. thaliana chromosome on which the segment lies. R is 135/29,000, 97/17,463, 101/23,560, 125/22,140, 139/26,170 for chromosomes 1–5, respectively (LISTER and DEAN 1993 ). B is the distance between markers in B. oleracea (in centimorgans).

To evaluate the probability that an observed collinear region arose by chance, an empirical permutation procedure was developed. In each permutation, markers from B. oleracea linkage groups were assigned randomly and uniformly to the A. thaliana genome. After the permutation, the scoring metric was calculated for each collinear region found in the permuted data set. If the permuted data set did not contain a collinear region of a given length, the metric was assigned a high value. The procedure was repeated 1000 times to obtain the expected distribution of scores for a particular length of a collinear region under the null hypothesis that collinear regions are due to chance association between loci. To obtain the P value for an observed collinear region, its distance metric was calculated and compared with the distribution of the metric scores for collinear regions of the same length between the same linkage group and chromosome generated from the permutations. The percentage of the scores from the permutations that were less than the observed score was defined as the P value for the observed collinear region.

The relative importance of the number of loci and the distance between loci in determining the significance of a collinear region is arbitrary. With our standards, S(n) must be considerably lower than S(n + 1) to be significant. For example, between O2 and At5, the 5% quantile of the scoring metric under the null distribution for collinear regions with two shared loci was 2.31 cM vs. 7.14 cM for three shared loci. Collinear regions with more than four shared loci were claimed to be significant at the 5% level.

The comparative data between B. oleracea and A. thaliana were parsed in two ways before testing for significant collinear regions. Both manipulations tended to increase the number of observed, collinear regions. First, if two or more markers had similarity to the same BAC in A. thaliana or shared the same centimorgan location in B. oleracea, we assigned the order of these markers or sequences relative to each other by eye. Second, in each pairwise comparison between a B. oleracea linkage group and A. thaliana chromosome, each locus on a B. oleracea linkage group was allowed a single position on the A. thaliana chromosome. Duplicates caused the algorithm to identify unlikely collinear regions. For example, if one linkage group of B. oleracea contained three closely linked loci of which two were recently duplicated, then this entire region would incorrectly be inferred to be collinear with a region defined by only two loci on an A. thaliana chromosome.

	RESULTS

TOP ABSTRACT MATERIALS AND METHODS RESULTS DISCUSSION LITERATURE CITED

Identification of A. thaliana sequences putatively orthologous to B. oleracea marker sequences:
The A. thaliana BAC database was queried with sequences from a total of 158 Brassica DNA probes using the nucleotide pattern-matching program blastn (ALTSCHUL et al. 1997 ), and 18,007 BACs had substantial similarity (bit score >32) to these query sequences. A. thaliana sequences detected within the initial database search may be derived from ancient, duplicated regions or ancient, paralogous gene family members within the A. thaliana genome (ARABIDOPSIS GENOME INITIATIVE 2000). To reduce the number of these matches, we first reasoned that Brassica query sequences would have low similarity to many A. thaliana sequences due to ancient events, but have high similarity to a much smaller number of A. thaliana sequences due to recent common ancestry. A truncated distribution of blastn scores >60 supports this hypothesis (Fig 3). At low blast scores (<82), the number of A. thaliana BACs similar to Brassica sequences begins to rise asymptotically. Second, the A. thaliana genome was duplicated 45 million years prior to the divergence of A. thaliana and B. oleracea (KOCH et al. 2000 ; LYNCH and CONERY 2000 ). Thus, we also inferred that an A. thaliana sequence that is orthologous to a Brassica sequence should be more similar to the Brassica sequence than the mean duplicate A. thaliana sequences are to each other. Within the A. thaliana genome, the expected number of silent substitutions per silent site for duplicate coding sequences is 0.8 (LYNCH and CONERY 2000 ). We aligned our rough Brassica sequence with A. thaliana sequence, and we found that Brassica/A. thaliana coding sequence alignments with blast scores of 82 or above were highly similar at third position sites (data not shown). Thus, a Brassica query sequence and an A. thaliana BAC were considered putatively orthologous if they generated a blast score of 82 or higher in a pairwise comparison. If a BAC had a score <82 when compared to a query sequence, it was removed from the analysis.

View larger version (19K): In this window In a new window Download PPT slide   Figure 3. Number of BACs detected by Brassica marker sequences at different BLAST bit scores. Only blastn scores 60 are plotted. The number of Arabidopsis thaliana BACs detected by markers rises asymptotically at lower BLAST scores. Sequence matches with scores <82 (identified by the arrow) were not included in our analysis. For plotting, one outlier with a bit score of 1104 was removed.

Of the 158 Brassica probes, sequences from 131 (83%) have significant similarity to one or more A. thaliana BACs. Four-fifths of the probes with significant similarity to A. thaliana have putative orthology to only a single BAC, and each probe has similarity to a mean of 1.4 loci within the A. thaliana genome. Only two probes have similarity to more than three BACs (Fig 4).

View larger version (10K): In this window In a new window Download PPT slide   Figure 4. Distribution of the number of Arabidopsis thaliana BACs detected by Brassica marker sequences with a blastn bit score >82.

The majority of B. oleracea linkage groups are strongly associated with a single A. thaliana chromosome. Over one-half of the probes that mapped to five of the nine B. oleracea linkage groups were putatively orthologous to BACs within a single chromosome (O2 and At5; O4 and At2; O5 and At1; O8 and At1; O9 and At5; Table 1). Despite this general association, probes that map to each B. oleracea linkage group have putative orthologs throughout the A. thaliana genome, suggesting extensive chromosomal repatterning has occurred since the divergence of these two species (Table 1). In addition, sequences are not uniformly distributed across A. thaliana chromosomes, and the P value of the goodness-of-fit test was <0.05. On the basis of comparisons of total and expected numbers in Table 1, sequences with similarity to At5 are overrepresented in the B. oleracea genome, while sequences with similarity to At3 are underrepresented.

Significant collinear regions between B. oleracea and A. thaliana:
Pairwise comparisons between each B. oleracea linkage group and A. thaliana chromosome show that several adjacent markers within a linkage group may correspond to adjacent markers within a single chromosome. The pairwise comparison between linkage groups and chromosomes reduces the confounding effect of markers mapped to paralogous regions within the B. oleracea genome (Fig 1C) because Brassica markers that have homology to different chromosomes are not simultaneously examined for collinearity.

Long collinear regions are shared between O1 and At4, O5 and At1, O3 and At5, as well as between several other linkage groups and chromosomes (Fig 5). Nonetheless, the relationship between many genomic regions remains ambiguous. Some markers may be closely linked in one genome but not in the other genome. For example, two loci >20 cM apart on O1 lie within 1 Mbp on At1 (Fig 5). Or, some markers closely linked in both genomes may clearly delineate a region of putative orthology, but another marker may not be closely linked to them. For example, two markers are tightly linked within O3 and At3 (both at 17.5 Mbp); a third marker is also tightly linked in B. oleracea, but it lies at 20 Mbp in A. thaliana.

View larger version (61K): In this window In a new window Download PPT slide   Figure 5. Pairwise comparison between Brassica oleracea linkage groups and Arabidopsis thaliana chromosomes. The map position of B. oleracea probes (cM, y-axis) is plotted against the position of their putative orthologs within A. thaliana (Mbp, x-axis).

The collinearity test identified all collinear, putatively orthologous regions with confidence. Using the strict definition or the general definition of collinearity with both species as testers (see MATERIALS AND METHODS), the algorithm aligned a total of 240 cM of the 872-cM B. oleracea genetic map, or 28% of the B. oleracea genome, to A. thaliana within 34 significant collinear regions at a P < 0.05 level of significance (Table 2). The algorithm identified regions that appeared collinear in the visual examination, regions such as the interval shared between O1 and At4. The largest segment of significant collinearity is the region in O5 that is putatively orthologous to At1. This region has 13 markers and spans 45.3 cM, corresponding to 7.4 Mbp within At1, and is significant at P < 0.01 (Table 2). Every B. oleracea linkage group has a significant collinear region on at least one A. thaliana chromosome (Table 2). Collinear regions contain an average of 3.3 markers corresponding to 2.1 Mbp in A. thaliana and 7.1 cM in B. oleracea. The distribution of the number of markers that define collinear regions is highly skewed because one-half of the regions have only two markers, while all but one of the remaining regions have three, four, or five markers. As a result, the median collinear region length is 2.5 markers corresponding to 695,000 bp and 2.5 cM. Marker density may be an important factor in detecting collinear regions. O6 has the fewest number of markers and only a single significant collinear region.

The true length of each collinear region extends for some distance beyond the outermost loci detected here. An estimate of the true length of a particular segment can be made using the equation from NADEAU and TAYLOR 1984 . With this correction, the mean estimated length of all significant collinear runs is 11.6 cM (median 5.1 cM) in B. oleracea and 3.8 Mbp (median 1.2 Mbp) in A. thaliana, accounting for 45% of the B. oleracea genome.

Seven of the nine B. oleracea linkage groups have regions that are collinear with more than one A. thaliana chromosome (Fig 6), again suggesting that numerous translocations have occurred since the divergence of the two species. In addition, closely linked regions within a single B. oleracea linkage group may be collinear to different segments within the same A. thaliana chromosome, suggesting intrachromosomal rearrangements. On O7, for example, one collinear region (pN64–pN101) spans 9.6–10.1 Mbp within At5. This region lies adjacent to another region defined by pO169 and pN20 on the genetic map, but putative orthologs to these markers span 19.8–20.4 Mbp within At5 (Fig 6). Because neither interval corresponds to the known duplicated segment within At5 (ARABIDOPSIS GENOME INITIATIVE 2000), this region likely defines an intrachromosomal rearrangement that has occurred since the divergence of B. oleracea and A. thaliana. Additional collinear segments that are contiguous on the genetic map and hybridize to the same A. thaliana chromosome are found on O3, O5, and O9. However, within these linkage groups, neighboring markers on the genetic map have similarity to the same general area within the A. thaliana genome, indicating either a local rearrangement of markers or that markers were misplaced on the B. oleracea genetic map.

View larger version (64K): In this window In a new window Download PPT slide   Figure 6. Positions of significant collinear regions between the Brassica oleracea genetic map and the Arabidopsis thaliana genome sequence. Boxes enclose putative collinear runs. A line within the box indicates that the corresponding B. oleracea genetic marker was not found within the A. thaliana chromosome on which the collinear run was identified. A line through a box indicates that a new collinear run from the same chromosome was initiated. *, significance levels of P < 0.05; **, significance levels of P < 0.01.

The relationship between the B. oleracea genetic map distances and the A. thaliana genome sequence can be inferred from regions within both genomes with a large number of shared markers. In most such regions (e.g., O4 and At3, O9 and At5), the genetic distance between each marker on the B. oleracea linkage group is roughly proportional to the nucleotide distance between each marker on the A. thaliana chromosome (Table 2, Fig 5), indicating that the relationship between the genetic distance in B. oleracea and physical distance in A. thaliana is linear for these regions. A notable exception is the longest region of putative homology shared between O5 and At1. As would be expected if the frequency of recombination per nucleotide is greater at chromosome ends than toward the centromere, the change in centimorgans vs. the change in base pairs is greater between markers at the end of the linkage group than between markers in the center. At the top of the linkage group, markers are distantly linked in B. oleracea but lie fairly close together on the A. thaliana chromosome. The slope progressively declines toward the center of the B. oleracea linkage group as the markers approach the centromere of At1 located at 14 Mbp (ARABIDOPSIS GENOME INITIATIVE 2000). Markers that are closely linked in the center of O5 lie very far apart on At1.

	DISCUSSION

TOP ABSTRACT MATERIALS AND METHODS RESULTS DISCUSSION LITERATURE CITED

Sequence similarity and orthology between B. oleracea and A. thaliana:
Identification of orthologous regions between two genomes depends on correctly identifying orthologous sequences that are shared between the genomes (Fig 1). Orthology and the significance of a relationship between two sequences are very difficult to infer (DEKEN 1983 ; YUAN et al. 1998 ), especially when searching a partially duplicated genome such as A. thaliana (ARABIDOPSIS GENOME INITIATIVE 2000). A priori assumptions about the extent of sequence similarity that indicates orthology are problematical for several reasons. For example, two sequences may be considered orthologous if they are matched with a high blast score or significance level (e.g., WOLFE and SHIELDS 1997 ). However, if the cutoff score is not high enough, sequence from one genome could have significant similarity to anciently duplicated paralogs within the second genome (see Fig 1B). In contrast, one can assume that a query sequence from one genome is orthologous only to the other genome's sequence to which it is most similar (e.g., GRANT et al. 2000 ). In this case, only a single sequence from a recent duplication would be detected although both duplicates have the same ancestral relationship to the query sequence.

In this study, we define criteria by which to accept or reject A. thaliana sequences as likely orthologs to Brassica sequences on the basis of the distribution of blastn scores and the a priori knowledge of expected nucleotide differences between paralogous sequences within the A. thaliana genome (LYNCH and CONERY 2000 ). We estimated that the point at which underlying similarity between two sequences is high enough to indicate recent common ancestry corresponds to a blastn score of 82. Over four-fifths of Brassica sequences with putative orthologs in the A. thaliana genome are similar to only one BAC, indicating that the criteria eliminated anciently duplicated sequences within the Arabidopsis genome from the analysis. A few Brassica markers did detect loci in duplicated regions of the A. thaliana genome. For example, pN102 lies on O2 at 39.2 cM and has similarity to a duplicated region between the top of At3 and At5 at 5 Mbp (ARABIDOPSIS GENOME INITIATIVE 2000). Without an outgroup, it is difficult to infer whether the small number of A. thaliana duplicated loci detected as orthologous to Brassica sequences arose before or after the divergence of A. thaliana from B. oleracea.

The degree of conservation inferred between genomes depends on the cutoff score used to define putative orthology. In this analysis, if sequence alignments with low blastn scores were considered orthologous, additional collinear regions would be identified. For example, the marker pW105 is positioned at 27 cM on B. oleracea LG 1 and is similar to a sequence at 10 Mbp in A. thaliana ch. 4 with a score of 119. Under less stringent criteria, pW105 could be considered collinear with pR36, a marker positioned at 35 cM on LG 1 and aligned to A. thaliana ch. 4 at 12 Mbp with a blastn score of 74. Similarly, if only sequence alignments with high blastn scores were considered orthologous, some collinear regions reported in this analysis, such as the region defined by markers pO125 and pR72 on LG 2, would not be identified. Marker pO125 is positioned at 75 cM and is aligned to a sequence at 9 Mbp on A. thaliana ch. 3 with a blastn score of 234. Marker pR72 is positioned at 75 cM and is aligned to a sequence at 9 Mbp on A. thaliana ch. 3 with a blastn score of 92. Finally, Brassica markers may be similar to a region of the A. thaliana genome to which other linked Brassica markers have no similarity. These singleton hits increase as the stringency for orthology is reduced.

Statistical test of collinearity:
Probes may be closely linked in one genome while their orthologs are distantly linked in another (Fig 1D and Fig 5). In such a case, it is difficult to determine if the intervening region between the probes is orthologous. This determination often depends on the researcher's judgment, and orthologous regions may be identified using very liberal criteria (BENNETZEN 2000 ). The collinearity method presented here identifies collinear regions between two genomes and calculates the probability that these regions occurred by chance alone. Our method is based on the analysis outlined by GAUT 2001 . Like Gaut's method, this method uses both the number of shared probes between two linkage groups and the distances between those probes as criteria to evaluate a metric of collinearity. In addition, this method, like Gaut's, does not define an ad hoc number of probes or an ad hoc distance between probes that is required for a collinear region to be significant. Rather, the metric of an observed collinear region is compared against the metrics of collinear regions that would be expected to occur by chance. Finally, in each pairwise comparison between linkage groups, only one copy of a locus and its putative ortholog may lie on each linkage group. The pairwise comparisons and the requirement of a single shared marker reduce the misleading effect of Brassica probes that map to paralogous loci within the B. oleracea genome (see Fig 1C).

Despite these similarities, this collinearity approach differs from Gaut's approach in several major respects. First, the metric to evaluate collinear regions integrates physical distance from one genome with genetic distance from the other. Second, the collinearity program evaluates collinear regions nested within longer regions. This characteristic is important because a long collinear region shared between linkage groups or chromosomes may not be significant, but nested collinear regions within this long interval may be significant. Third, markers that lie at the end of one collinear region and at the beginning of another collinear region are evaluated in both positions (i.e., pN121 in Fig 2). Fourth, although both models use empirical permutations to estimate statistical significance, in each permutation of our model, markers from each linkage group of one species are randomly and uniformly assigned a position within the second species' genome. Thus, to evaluate significance, the algorithm compares the metric of each collinear region with the expected distribution of the metric under the null hypothesis that collinear regions are due to chance association between loci across genomes. In contrast, in Gaut's permutation, markers from each linkage group are randomly and uniformly assigned to positions within every linkage group of the second species. Finally, the algorithm can evaluate genomes for collinear regions using both general and strict definitions of collinearity.

Under the general definition of collinearity, the identity of collinear regions may depend on which chromosome or linkage group is a tester and which is a standard in the comparison (Fig 2). In this study, if a collinear region was detected when a chromosome was used as both a standard and a tester, it was recorded. Collinear regions identified using the strict definition of collinearity were also recorded. Under the general definition of collinearity, many collinear regions that were significant when using one chromosome as the tester but not significant when using the same chromosome as the standard did not correspond to orthologous intervals. For example, the markers pO169 and pR36 define a significant, collinear region between O7 and At5 where At5 is the standard (Fig 2A). However, within this region, six markers lie between the last two markers (pN20 and pR36) within the B. oleracea genetic map, and all six markers have putative orthologs to different regions within At5 (Fig 2B).

Our method of scoring collinear regions, inferring collinearity, and establishing significance is based on several assumptions. First, when calculating the scoring metric, the ratio between genetic distance and physical distance is assumed to be constant over each A. thaliana chromosome. Nonetheless, because the genetic distance and physical distance are known to vary across A. thaliana chromosomes (COPENHAVER et al. 1998 ), each chromosome is assigned a different centimorgan-to-base-pair conversion factor. Second, in the B. oleracea genetic map, probes are assumed to be in the correct order. Because mapping errors do occur, the collinearity algorithm is conservative and likely underestimates the number and length of collinear regions. Third, in each permutation, Brassica probes are uniformly distributed within each Arabidopsis chromosome. However, low-copy sequences tend not to be associated with genomic regions flanking the centromeres (ARABIDOPSIS GENOME INITIATIVE 2000). Finally, we assumed, like GAUT 2001 , that a large number of collinear probes shared between linkage groups is strong evidence for an orthologous region.

Several published reports of genome comparisons between A. thaliana and Brassica species were compared to our results to test the utility of the collinearity algorithm and the effect of these assumptions. If previously identified collinear regions were among the significant collinear regions identified by our analysis, then we judged that our algorithm has high utility. We used two distinct criteria to infer if previously reported homologous/orthologous regions were among those identified by the collinearity analysis. Under the first criterion, two requirements had to be met. The region of A. thaliana identified in our analysis must overlap with a region detected in the previous analysis. In addition, the B. oleracea region identified in our analysis must lie on a linkage group that was likely homologous or homeologous to the Brassica linkage group reported previously. A second, less stringent criterion was used if relationships between linkage groups could not be inferred because of experimental design (i.e., O'NEILL and BANCROFT 2000 ). In this case, we inferred that an observed collinear region corresponded to previous reports if a region of A. thaliana within a significant collinear region in our analysis overlapped with the region of the A. thaliana genome previously reported as similar.

The collinearity test identified almost all putative homologous/orthologous regions reported in previous genetic and/or physical comparative mapping studies (Table 3). Out of 22 previously reported regions of similarity, the collinearity test identified 20. In addition, the test identified several regions that have not been reported previously and could be targets of future studies. Of the 22 previously characterized regions, 17 were collinear and significant at P < 0.05, and 3 additional regions were collinear but not significant, reflecting the conservative nature of the test. Two published regions were not identified by our analysis. Our collinearity analysis assigned somewhat more than one-quarter of the B. oleracea genetic map to putatively orthologous regions within A. thaliana (see below). The fact that our analysis identified over three-quarters of the previously reported collinear regions suggests both that comparative studies have not randomly sampled the Brassica genome for regions of collinearity and that long, conserved regions may be overrepresented in the literature.

Analysis of the ancestral Brassica genome:
Several studies have provided evidence that the base Brassica genome is highly duplicated (HAGA 1938 ; ROBBELEN 1960 ; TRUCO et al. 1996 ; LAN et al. 2000 ). However, LAGERCRANTZ and LYDIATE 1996 proposed that the Brassica genome is largely triplicated, and this hypothesis has been supported by subsequent studies (LAGERCRANTZ 1998 ; O'NEILL and BANCROFT 2000 ). This discrepancy is likely due in large part to different criteria for inferring genome redundancy. In a visual examination of our comparative data, we found 15 segments within the A. thaliana genome that are similar but not necessarily collinear to more than one region of the B. oleracea genome (Table 4). Of the 15 regions, 5 are present in two copies, 8 are present in three copies, and 2 are present in more than three copies (Table 4). Because such a large number of A. thaliana regions are found in triplicate in B. oleracea, this visual inspection is consistent with the hypothesis that the base diploid Brassica species have evolved from an ancient hexaploid. However, the collinearity test offers little evidence for triplication. The test finds that only 3 of the 15 A. thaliana intervals are triplicated within B. oleracea (Table 4). Inferences about whole-genome relationships can greatly differ depending on the criteria used to infer those relationships. A future comparison between A. thaliana and a very high-density genetic or physical map of Brassica will be able to resolve conclusively the question of ancient hexaploidy in Brassica.

Replication and rearrangements within the B. oleracea genome:
Our analysis does show that numerous chromosomal translocations, deletions, and duplications differentiate A. thaliana from B. oleracea. For example, different regions of O3 have high similarity to all five A. thaliana chromosomes (Fig 3). In addition, Brassica markers often have putative orthologs within a region of the A. thaliana genome to which other linked Brassica markers have no similarity (i.e., between O5 and At4), suggesting that relatively short sequences have transferred between chromosomes. Such events have been identified in the recent evolutionary history of humans (O'KEEFE and EICHLER 2000 ) and in plants (R. SCHMIDT, personal communication). Finally, a putative intrachromosomal duplication can be seen on O4. Several Brassica probes hybridize to both the top and the bottom of O4 and have putative orthologs within the same position in A. thaliana At1, At2, and At4 (Fig 5). This duplication may be shared by all Brassica species; LAGERCRANTZ and LYDIATE 1996 identified an intrachromosomal duplication within the homeologous B. nigra G6 linkage group.

Although inferences about the rate of change within two genomes require a third, outgroup genome for comparison, we nonetheless suggest that most rearrangements reported here occurred within the Brassica lineage since its divergence from the Brassica-Arabidopsis common ancestor. If the A. thaliana genome has had many duplications since its divergence from the Brassica-Arabidopsis common ancestor, one would expect that more than one region of the A. thaliana genome would correspond to a single region within B. oleracea. This occurs infrequently (Fig 4), and only two regions of the B. oleracea genome were found by the collinearity test to be associated with more than one region in A. thaliana (Fig 6). Likewise, if many large deletions have occurred in the A. thaliana genome since its divergence from the Brassica-Arabidopsis common ancestor, large portions of the B. oleracea genome would not be similar to regions within the A. thaliana genome. With the possible exception of the top of O6, all regions of B. oleracea have similarity to A. thaliana regions (Table 1, Fig 5). The concept that genome change has occurred predominantly during Brassica evolution (as opposed to Arabidopsis) is also consistent with both linkage and microcollinearity studies. The genomes of the genus Brassica and that of A. thaliana likely diverged 20–24 MYA (KOCH et al. 2000 , KOCH et al. 2001 ). Although Capsella rubella and A. thaliana are <33% more similar at the nucleotide level than are B. oleracea and A. thaliana (KOCH et al. 2000 ; WARWICK and BLACK 1997 ), comparisons of several kilobases between A. thaliana and C. rubella have revealed perfect collinearity of genes (ROSSBERG et al. 2001 ). In contrast, comparisons of intervals between A. thaliana and Brassica species have been characterized by numerous gene rearrangements or deletions (e.g., GRANT et al. 1998 ; QUIROS et al. 2001 ). In addition, restriction fragment length polymorphism markers spanning most of A. thaliana chromosome 4 are almost perfectly collinear with two C. rubella linkage groups (ACARKAN et al. 2000 ). This conservation of marker order contrasts with the extensive rearrangements between the Brassica and Arabidopsis genomes. This study does not rigorously substantiate the hypothesis that extensive genome rearrangements occurred on the Brassica lineage because Capsella is more closely related to Arabidopsis than is Brassica. As a result, it is possible (although unlikely) that the common ancestor of Arabidopsis/Capsella and Brassica had a Brassica-like genome structure.

The large number of differences between the genomes may in part have been the result of the recent polyploidization of B. oleracea. Extensive repatterning of a genome subsequent to polyploidization has been suggested to account for the scattered, duplicate segments within the yeast genome (WOLFE and SHIELDS 1997 ), and such repatterning has been observed within the plant paleopolyploids Zea mays (HELENTJARIS et al. 1988 ; GAUT 2001 ) and A. thaliana (ARABIDOPSIS GENOME INITIATIVE 2000). In both Brassica and wheat (SONG et al. 1995 ; LIU et al. 1998 ; SHAKED et al. 2001 ), polyploidization has been shown to be accompanied by rapid genome change. Nonetheless, genome evolution has been proposed to occur rapidly in diploids as well as polyploids (BRUBAKER et al. 1999 ). The structure of an outgroup genome such as Aethionema grandiflora (GALLOWAY et al. 1998 ) could be used to estimate the rate of change on the Brassica and Arabidopsis lineages and test the correlation between polyploidy and genome change.

	ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank the Arabidopsis Genome Initiative for open access to the sequence data. Financial support was provided by a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in Bioinformatics to L.L. and a National Science Foundation grant to T.O.

Manuscript received July 1, 2002; Accepted for publication January 25, 2003.

	LITERATURE CITED

TOP ABSTRACT MATERIALS AND METHODS RESULTS DISCUSSION LITERATURE CITED

ACARKAN, A., M. ROSSBERG, M. KOCH, and R. SCHMIDT, 2000  Comparative genome analysis reveals extensive conservation of genome organization for Arabidopsis thaliana and Capsella rubella.. Plant J. 23:55-62.[Medline]

ALTSCHUL, S., T. MADDEN, A. SCHÄFFER, J. ZHANG, and Z. ZHANG et al., 1997  Gapped BLAST and PSI-BLAST: a new generation of protein database search programs. Nucleic Acids Res. 25:3389-3402.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

Analysis of the genome sequence of the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana.. (2000) Nature 408:796-812.[Medline]

BENNETZEN, J., 2000  Comparative sequence analysis of plant nuclear genomes: microcolinearity and its many exceptions. Plant Cell 12:1021-1029.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

BOHUON, E. J. R., L. D. RAMSAY, J. A. CRAFT, A. E. ARTHUR, and D. F. MARSHALL et al., 1998  The association of flowering time quantitative trait loci with duplicated regions and candidate loci in Brassica oleracea. Genetics 150:393-401.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

BRUBAKER, C. L., A. H. PATERSON, and J. F. WENDEL, 1999  Comparative genetic mapping of allotetraploid cotton and its diploid progenitors. Genome 42:184-203.

CAMARGO, L. E. A., L. SAVIDES, G. JUNG, J. NIENHUIS, and T. C. OSBORN, 1997  Location of the self-incompatability locus in an RFLP and RAPD map of B. oleracea. J. Hered. 88:57-60.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

CAVELL, A. C., D. LYDIATE, I. PARKIN, C. DEAN, and M. TRICK, 1998  Collinearity between a 30cM segment of Arabidopsis thaliana chromosome 4 and duplicated regions within the Brassica napus genome. Genome 41:62-69.[Medline]

COPENHAVER, G., W. BROWNE, and D. PREUSS, 1998  Assaying genome-wide recombination and centromere functions with Arabidopsis tetrads. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 95:247-252.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

DEKEN, J., 1983 Probabilistic behavior of longest common subsequence length, pp. 359–362 in Time Warps, String Edits, and Macromolecules: The Theory and Practice of Sequence Comparison, edited by D. SANKOFF and J. KRUSKAL. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.

EHRLICH, J., D. SANKOFF, and J. NADEAU, 1997  Synteny conservation and chromosome rearrangements during mammalian evolution. Genetics 147:289-296.[Abstract]

GALLOWAY, G. L., R. L. MALMBERG, and R. A. PRICE, 1998  Phylogenetic utility of the nuclear gene arginine decarboxylase: an example from Brassicaceae.. Mol. Biol. Evol. 15:1312-1320.[Abstract]

GAUT, B., 2001  Patterns of chromosomal duplication in maize and their implications for comparative maps of the grasses. Genome Res. 11:55-66.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

GRANT, D., P. CREGAN, and R. SHOEMAKER, 2000  Genome organization in dicots: genome duplication in Arabidopsis and synteny between soybean and Arabidopsis.. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 97:4168-4173.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

GRANT, M., J. MCDOWELL, A. SHARPE, M. DE TORRES ZABALA, and D. LYDIATE et al., 1998  Independent deletions of a pathogen-resistance gene in Brassica and Arabidopsis.. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 95:15843-15848.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

HAGA, T., 1938  Relationship of genome to secondary pairing in Brassica.. Jpn. J. Genet. 13:277-284.

HELENTJARIS, T., D. WEBER, and S. WRIGHT, 1988  Identification of the genomic locations of duplicate nucleotide sequences in maize by analysis of restriction fragment length polymorphism. Genetics 118:353-356.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

HU, J., J. SADOWSKI, T. C. OSBORN, B. S. LANDRY, and C. F. QUIROS, 1998  Linkage alignment from four independent Brassica oleracea RFLP maps. Genome 41:226-235.

KOCH, M., B. HAUBOLD, and T. MITCHELL-OLDS, 2000  Comparative evolutionary analysis of chalcone synthase and alcohol dehydrogenase loci in Arabidopsis, Arabis, and related genera. Mol. Biol. Evol. 17:1482-1498.

KOCH, M., B. HAUBOLD, and T. MITCHELL-OLDS, 2001  Molecular systematics of the Brassicaceae: evidence from coding plastidic matK and nuclear chs sequences. Am. J. Bot. 88:534-544.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

KOWALSKI, S., T. LAN, K. FELDMANN, and A. PATERSON, 1994  Comparative mapping of Arabidopsis thaliana and Brassica oleracea chromosomes reveal islands of conserved organization. Genetics 138:499-510.[Abstract]

LAGERCRANTZ, U., 1998  Comparative mapping between Arabidopsis thaliana and Brassica nigra indicates that Brassica genomes have evolved through extensive genome replication accompanied by chromosome fustions and frequent rearrangements. Genetics 150:1217-1228.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

LAGERCRANTZ, U. and D. LYDIATE, 1996  Comparative genome mapping in Brassica.. Genetics 144:1903-1910.[Abstract]

LAN, T. and A. PATERSON, 2000  Comparative mapping of quantitative trait loci sculpting the curd of Brassica oleracea.. Genetics 155:1927-1954.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

LAN, T., T. DELMONTE, K. REISCHMANN, J. HYMAN, and S. KOWALSKI et al., 2000  An EST-enriched comparative map of Brassica oleracea and Arabidopsis thaliana.. Genome Res. 10:776-788.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

LISTER, C. and C. DEAN, 1993  Recombinant inbred lines for mapping RFLP and phenotypic markers in Arabidopsis thaliana.. Plant J. 4:745-750.

LIU, B., J. M. VEGA, and M. FELDMAN, 1998  Rapid genomic changes in newly synthesized amphiploids of Triticum and Aegilops. II. Changes in low-copy coding DNA sequences. Genome 41:535-542.[Medline]

LYNCH, M. and J. CONERY, 2000  The evolutionary fate and consequences of duplicate genes. Science 290:1151-1155.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

NADEAU, J. and B. TAYLOR, 1984  Lengths of chromosomal segments conserved since divergence of man and mouse. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 81:814-818.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

O'KEEFE, C., and E. EICHLER, 2000 The pathological consequences and evolutionary implications of recent human genetic duplications, pp. 29–46 in Comparative Genomics, edited by D. SANKOFF and J. H. NADEAU. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.

O'NEILL, C. and I. BANCROFT, 2000  Comparative physical mapping of the genome of Brassica oleracea var. alloglabra that are homeologous to sequenced regions of chromosome 4 and 5 of Arabidopsis thaliana.. Plant J. 23:233-243.[Medline]

PARKIN, I., 2000 Unraveling crucifer genomes through comparative mapping, pp. 425–437 in Comparative Genomics, edited by D. SANKOFF and J. H. NADEAU. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.

PARKIN, I., D. J. LYDIATE, and M. TRICK, 2002  Assessing the level of collinearity between Arabidopsis thaliana and Brassica napus for A. thaliana chromosome 5. Genome 45:356-366.[Medline]

QUIROS, C. F., F. GRELLET, J. SADOWSKI, T. SUZUKI, and G. LI et al., 2001  Arabidopsis and Brassica comparative genomics: sequence, structure and gene content in the ABI1-RPS2-Ck1 chromosomal segment and related regions. Genetics 157:1321-1330.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

RÖBBELEN, G., 1960  Beiträge zur analyse des Brassica genomes. Chromosoma 11:205-228.[Medline]

ROSSBERG, M., K. THERES, A. ACARKAN, R. HERRERO, and T. SCHMITT et al., 2001  Comparative sequence analysis reveals extensive microcolinearity in the lateral suppressor regions of the tomato, Arabidopsis, and Capsella genomes. Plant Cell 13:979-988.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

RYDER, C. D., L. B. SMITH, G. R. TEAKLE, and G. J. KING, 2001  Contrasting genome organisation: two regions of the Brassica oleracea genome compared with collinear regions of the Arabidopsis thaliana genome. Genome 44:808-817.[Medline]

SCHRANZ, M. E., P. QUIJADA, S. SUNG, L. LUKENS, and R. AMASINO et al., 2002  Characterization and effects of the replicated flowering time gene FLC in Brassica rapa.. Genetics 162:1457-1468.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

SHAKED, H., K. KASHKUSH, H. OZKAN, M. FELDMAN, and A. LEVY, 2001  Sequence elimination and cytosine methylation are rapid and reproducible responses of the genome to wide hybridization and allopolyploidy in wheat. Plant Cell 13:1749-1759.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

SONG, K., P. LU, K. TANG, and T. OSBORN, 1995  Rapid genome change in synthetic polyploids of Brassica and its implications for polyploid evolution. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 92:7719-7723.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

TRUCO, M. J., J. HU, J. SADOWSKI, and C. F. QUIROS, 1996  Inter- and intra-genomic homology of the Brassica genomes: implications for their origin and evolution. Theor. Appl. Genet. 93:1225-1233.

WARWICK, S. I. and L. D. BLACK, 1997  Phylogenetic implications of chloroplast DNA restriction site variation in subtribes Raphaninae and Cakilinae (Brassicaceae, tribe Brassicieae). Can. J. Bot. 75:960-973.

WOLFE, K. and D. SHIELDS, 1997  Molecular evidence for an ancient duplication of the entire yeast genome. Nature 387:708-713.[Medline]

YUAN, Y., O. EULENSTEIN, M. VINGRON, and P. BORK, 1998  Toward detection of orthologues in sequence databases. Bioinformatics 14:285-289.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

This article has been cited by other articles:

				H. T.T. Phan, S. R. Ellwood, K. Adhikari, M. N. Nelson, and R. P. Oliver The First Genetic and Comparative Map of White Lupin (Lupinus albus L.): Identification of QTLs for Anthracnose Resistance and Flowering Time, and a Locus for Alkaloid Content DNA Res, May 26, 2007; (2007) dsm009v1. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				J. S. Kim, T. Y. Chung, G. J. King, M. Jin, T.-J. Yang, Y.-M. Jin, H.-I. Kim, and B.-S. Park A Sequence-Tagged Linkage Map of Brassica rapa Genetics, September 1, 2006; 174(1): 29 - 39. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]