Genetic Diversity among Age Classes of a Pinus sylvestris (L.) Population from the Białowieża Primeval Forest, Poland

The Białowieża Primeval Forest (BPF) is Europe’s last primeval forest and an irreplaceable area for biodiversity conservation due to its size, protection status, and substantially undisturbed nature. There is no other forest in Europe with such a large surface representing highly-advanced natural succession. This article reports on the first analysis of the genetic variability and demographic structure of a self-renewed Pinus sylvestris population located in BPF, using both chloroplast and mitochondrial DNA markers. The analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) for chloroplast simple sequence repeats (cpSSRs) revealed a significant genetic differentiation among age classes that accounted for about 2% of the total variance, comparable to those reported among different populations of Scots pine. None of the 117 detected chloroplast haplotypes were common to all age classes. Haplotype diversity ranged from 0.370 to 0.415 for cpSSRs and from 0.320 to 0.455 for mitochondrial markers. The genetic variation of the studied age classes—represented by mitochondrial markers—strongly depicts the maternal genetic structure, indicating limited seed dispersal. Temporal genetic substructuring is maintained within a self-renewed population of Scots pine from the BPF

Inter- and interspecific serological relationships in Pellia epiphylla complex

Antigenic proteins were used as markers for the study of relationships between three liverwort species from P. epiphylla complex. It has recently been shown that the electrophoretic phenotypes of this species suggested an amphiploid origin of P. borealis. Two sibling species: P. epiphylla -species S and -species N could have probably represented the parental species for P. borealis. We examined three clones of P. borealis from different localities using immunodiffusion. Then we compared them with P. epiphylla species S and N as well as with the mixture of proteins of P. epiphylla S and N samples. The results indicate that polyploid P. borealis shows an identical immunological pattern to that of the mixture of proteins of putative parental species. Only in one case the result resembled much more the pattern of P. epiphylla S proteins. The sibling species P. epiphylla S and N showed antigenic difference but the nature of the differences requires further studies. Antigenic pro-perties of proteins from P. epiphylla S and N and of their allopolyploid - P. borealis, indicated some specifity of the protein spectrum in each of the parental species and intermediate character of proteins in the polyploid forms

Seed Total Protein Profiling in Discrimination of Closely Related Pines: Evidence from the Pinus mugo Complex

The Pinus mugo complex includes several dozen closely related European mountain pines. The discrimination of specific taxa within this complex is still extremely challenging, although numerous methodologies have been used to solve this problem, including morphological and anatomical analyses, cytological studies, allozyme variability, and DNA barcoding, etc. In this study, we used the seed total protein (STP) patterns to search for taxonomically interesting differences among three closely-related pine taxa from the Pinus mugo complex and five more distant species from the Pinaceae family. It was postulated that STP profiling can serve as the backup methodology for modern taxonomic research, in which more sophisticated analyses, i.e., based on the DNA barcoding approach, have been found to be useless. A quantitative analysis of the STP profiles revealed characteristic electrophoretic patterns for all the analyzed taxa from Pinaceae. STP profiling enabled the discrimination of closely-related pine taxa, even of those previously indistinguishable by chloroplast DNA barcodes. The results obtained in this study indicate that STP profiling can be very useful for solving complex taxonomic puzzles

Isoenzymatic and cytological studies of some Asiatic species of the genus Salsola

The genetic and cytological variability of population of three Salsola species from Asia was investigated, using isozyme electrophoresis and haematoxylin staining. Eight enzyme systems, representing 14-17 loci, were examined: 6PGD, DIA, G6PD, GDH, GOT, MDH, PGM and PGI. Analysis of the chromosome number revealed that the three species have the same number of chromosomes: 2n=18. Parameters describing genetic diversity indicate a very low level of genetic variation of the studied populations. The isozyme data support hypothesis that strong directional selection can result in lower level of genetic variation of arid plant populations