li Chaoqun

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Science

Petrocosmea qinlingensis is a protected wild plant endemic in China, inhabiting low-light limestone cliffs but the complete chloroplast genome has not been reported. In this study, we first sequenced and assembled the complete chloroplast genome of P. qinlingensis. The total size of this genome was 153,865 bp, including a large single-copy (LSC) re...

Two new species of Petrocosmea (Gesneriaceae), P. purpureomaculata M.Q. Han, J. Cai & J. D. Ya from Jinping County and P. wui M.Q. Han, J. Cai & J. D. Ya from Eshan County, Yunnan Province, China, are described and illustrated. Petrocosmea wui was previously misidentified as P. coerulea due to its shield‐shaped leaf base, but can be distinguished b...

A widely held hypothesis in evolution is that adaptive specialization constrains the potential direction of future evolutionary change and thus may be irreversible, i.e., the Dollo's law. However, this hypothesis has long been subject to debate in evolutionary biology. Floral specialization is intriguing as it is usually linked to reproductive isol...

Background Great advances have been achieved in our understanding of flower development and evolution since the establishment of the ABC model. However, it remains a challenge to define the exact context of organ identity in the component interactions of the ABC model. Results Through hybridization, we detected a homeotic mutant in Petrocosmea (Ge...

Unlike most crops, which were domesticated through long periods of selection by ancient humans, horticultural plants were primarily domesticated through intentional selection over short time periods. The molecular mechanisms underlying the origin and spread of novel traits in the domestication process have remained largely unexplored in horticultur...

CYCLOIDEA (CYC)-like TCP genes have conserved dorsal identity function in patterning floral zygomorphy mainly through specific expression in dorsal petals of a flower. Their expression changes are usually related to morphological diversity of zygomorphic flowers. However, it is still a challenge to elucidate the molecular mechanism underlying their...

Petrocosmea Oliver (Gesneriaceae) currently comprises 38 species with four non-nominate varieties, nearly all of which have been described solely from herbarium specimens. However, the dried specimens have obscured the full range of extremely diverse morphological variation that exists in the genus and has resulted in a poor subgeneric classificati...