Dual‐species origin of an adaptive chemical defense polymorphism

What is it about?

Plant diversification has been characterized by both allopolyploid speciation and by the evolution of diverse specialized metabolites, many of which function as anti-herbivore chemical defenses. It is likely that the novel genetic toolkit arising in allopolyploids has facilitated chemical defense evolution; however, this has rarely been documented empirically. Here we describe this phenomenon in the evolution of cyanogenesis (HCN release upon tissue damage) in white clover — a textbook example of a plant chemical defense that has been studied for more than a century. Integration of high-resolution genetic maps with genome sequence analyses reveals that each of white clover’s two diploid ancestors contributed one of the two chemical components that are required for this classic anti-herbivore defense.

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Photo by Sonika Agarwal on Unsplash

Photo by Sonika Agarwal on Unsplash