Phylogenetic relationships within the cosmopolitan family Rhamnaceae using ATPb gene promoter

摘要

Eighteen species of Rhamnaceae were collected from different geographical regions of Pakistan to resolve its controversial phylogenetic position using morphological and molecular analysis. The phylogenetic tree based on 71 different micro and macro-morphological characters using Paleontological and statistical software (PAST) with Dice’s coefficient showed an overall genetic diversity of 32%. Further, in each species the atp β gene promoter was amplified, purified, sequenced and the dendrogram was constructed using Molecular evolutionary genetic analysis (MEGA7) tool which divided the sequences into two main clades showing a narrow genetic diversity of 0.05% with well supported bootstrap’s values (95-100%). Pairwise’s distance ranged from 0.12 to 0.73 with a mean value of 0.396. The phylogenetic study confirmed the work done by earlier phylogeneticist with additional reports of some new species, Berchemia pakistanica , Berchemia edgworthii , Berchemia floribunda , Helinus lanceolatus and Rhamnella gilgitica which are indigenous to Pakistan. The analysis of Cis -regulatory elements and its mapping via Plant cis -acting regulatory DNA element (PLACE) and Domain graph (DOG) revealed numerous elements including 50 common and 28 unique, showing variation in copy numbers and locations. It was observed that Berchemia pakistanica and Berchemia edgworthii have the unique features possessing diverse cis -regulatory elements with diverse functions.