Royal Fern Genomes in Time

What is it about?

The dynamics of the evolution of fern genomes has not been studied until now. Here, we show that the genomes of royal ferns are not frozen in time. However, they evolve rather slowly. The slow rate of change in the genome size coincide with the conservation of chromosome number, reduced mutation rates, long generation times, and static evolution of morphological disparity. The royal ferns are therefore a key example to study the correlation of these aspects in the phylogenesis of an old fern lineage.

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Why is it important?

In the post-genomic age, access of genomic evidence will allow us to uncover key aspects of the evolution of plant life. However, these studies require well-developed hypothesis of which one is provided in this study.

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