Wencai Wang

Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine

The classical model of concerted evolution states that hundreds to thousands of ribosomal DNA (rDNA) units undergo homogenization, making the multiple copies of the individual units more uniform across the genome than would be expected given mutation frequencies and gene redundancy. While the universality of this over 50-year-old model has been con...

Eucommia ulmoides is a famous rubber-producing and medicinal tree species that produces unisexual flowers on separate individuals from the earliest stage of stamen/pistil primordium formation. To explore the genetic regulation pathway of sex in E. ulmoides, comprehensive genome-wide analyses and tissue-/sex-specific transcriptome comparisons of MAD...

Simple telomeric repeats composed of 6‐7 iterating nucleotide units are important sequences typically found at the ends of chromosomes. Here we analyzed their abundance and homogeneity in 42 gymnosperm (29 newly sequenced), 29 angiosperm (1 newly sequenced) and 8 bryophytes using bioinformatics, conventional cytogenetic and molecular biology approa...

Sex determination in dioecious plants has been broadly and progressively studied with the blooming of genome sequencing and editing techniques. This provides us with a great opportunity to explore the evolution and genetic mechanisms underlining the sex-determining system in dioecious plants. In this study, comprehensively reviewing advances in sex...

Gardenia jasminoides, a well-known traditional Chinese herb, has been extensively utilized for its being as stable pigment in food industry and as rich source of crocin in treatment of various cancers and cardiovascular disease. Nevertheless, molecular data shortage of the organelle and nuclear genome vastly limits further biological research on G....

Cancer and aging, two distinct processes of cell development, are two major problems threatening our human health and life in current days. Epigenetic studies, especially DNA methylation, have been intensively investigated on them over the years, though a lot of unanswered issues remain. In the human genome, rDNA is a highly conserved tandem repeat...

Given the 2,400-fold range of genome sizes (0.06-148.9 Gbp (gigabase pair)) of seed plants (angiosperms and gymno-sperms) with a broadly similar gene content (amounting to approximately 0.03 Gbp), the repeat-sequence content of the genome might be expected to increase with genome size, resulting in the largest genomes consisting almost entirely of...

The genus Acer, commonly known as maple, is a large plant lineage that comprises many economically and ecologically important species. However, because of low interspecific morphological variations and scarcity of molecular data, it is challenging to estimate the enigmatic phylogeny of Acer, limiting further utilization and conservation of maples....

Eucommia ulmoides, also known as the industrially and medicinally important hardy rubber tree, is the sole species of Eucommiaceae. Nevertheless, its dioecious property hinders sex recognition by traditional morphological observation at very early developmental stages, thus inhibiting breeding and economic cropping. In this study, double-digest res...

The evolutionary speed hypothesis (ESH) states that the molecular evolutionary rates of plants in the warm areas are higher than that in the cool areas. Nevertheless, largely due to the scarcity of molecular data from lower taxonomic lineages, ESH remains elusive in plants. In this study, we comprehensively conducted genome-wide comparative analyse...

Introduction: Gnetophytes, comprising the genera Ephedra, Gnetum and Welwitschia, are an understudied, enigmatic lineage of gymnosperms with a controversial phylogenetic relationship to other seed plants. Here we examined the organization of ribosomal DNA (rDNA) across representative species. Methods: We applied high-throughput sequencing approa...

Herbaceous bamboos (Olyreae) are a separate lineage with idiosyncratic traits, e.g., unisexual flowers and annual or seasonal flowering lifestyle, in the grass family. To elucidate the evolution of herbaceous bamboos we produced two complete chloroplast (cp) genomes from two monotypic genera i.e., Froesiochloa and Rehia via the genome-skimming appr...

Eucommia ulmoides (E. ulmoides), the sole species of Eucommiaceae with high importance of medicinal and industrial values, is a Tertiary relic plant that is endemic to China. However, the population genetics study ofE. ulmoideslags far behind largely due to the scarcity of genomic data. In this study, one complete chloroplast (cp) genome ofE. ulmoi...

Gnetophytes are an enigmatic gymnosperm lineage comprising three genera, Gnetum, Welwitschia and Ephedra, which are morphologically distinct from all other seed plants. Their distinctiveness has triggered much debate as to their origin, evolution and phylogenetic placement among seed plants. To increase our understanding of the evolution of gnetoph...

Eucommia ulmoides is a model representative of the dioecious plants with sex differentiation at initiation. Nevertheless, the genetic mechanisms of sexual dimorphism and sex determination in E. ulmoides remain poorly understood. In this study de novo transcriptome sequencing on Illumina platform generated >45 billion high-quality bases from fresh l...

The golden crane butterfly, Euonymus schensianus, is an important forest tree species with dramatically fragmented and declined populations. Here we characterized the complete chloroplast (cp) genome of this plant using Illumina pair-end sequencing data. The E. schensianus cp genome was 157,702 bp in length, containing a pair of inverted repeats (I...

The paperbark maple, Acer griseum, is an excellent landscape and ornamental species endemic to China, but its populations are now very fragmented and in decline. Here we characterized the complete chloroplast (cp) genome of A. griseum using genome skimming sequencing. The A. griseum cp genome was 156,857 bp in size, with a large single copy region...

Elaeagnus mollis is a rare and endangered oil tree species endemic to China. Here we assembled and characterized its whole chloroplast (cp) genome using Illumina pair-end sequencing data. The E. mollis cp genome was 151,428 bp in length, containing a large single copy region (LSC) of 81,003 bp and a small single copy region (SSC) of 18,561 bp separ...

Actinidiaceae is a well-known economically important plant family in asterids. To elucidate the chloroplast (cp) genome evolution within this family, here we present complete genomes of three species from two sister genera (Clematoclethra and Actinidia) in the Actinidiaceae via genome skimming technique. Comparative analyses revealed that the genom...

Taxa and GenBank accession numbers included in the phylogenomic analyses. (DOCX)

List of 79 unique plastid genes of Actinidiaceae included in the ?data-incomplete? data set of phylogenomic analyses. (DOCX)

List of 56 common unique plastid genes included in the ?data-complete? data set of phylogenomic analyses. (DOCX)

In all eukaryotes, the highly repeated 35S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) sequences encoding 18S-5.8S-26S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) typically show high levels of intragenomic uniformity due to homogenisation processes, leading to concerted evolution of 35S rDNA repeats. Here, we compared 35S rDNA divergence in several seed plants using next generation sequencing...

The RNA-directed DNA methylation pathway (RdDM) can be divided into three phases: (i) small interfering RNA biogenesis, (ii) de novo methylation and (iii) chromatin modification. To determine the degree of conservation of this pathway we searched for key genes amongst land plants. We used OrthoMCL and the OrthoMCL Viridiplantae database to analyse...