Reconstruction of evolutionary trajectories of coffee chromosomes
Abstract Background Polyploidization is a widespread phenomenon in plants, especially in angiosperms. Because of the rearrangement of chromosomes and the loss of genes, the number of plant chromosomes will reduce. Studies have shown that core dicotyledons are derived from ancestors with seven proto-chromosomes, which triplicated in a core-eudicot-common hexaploidization. Therefore, dicotyledon with different chromosome numbers have evolved on the basis of 21 chromosomes. On this basis, we selected grape as the intermediate reference species to infer the karyotype evolutionary process of coffee. Results We found that all the chromosome fusion forms in grape were end-end joining, and 7 (70.0%) chromosome fusion forms in coffee were end-end joining. In the process of grape forming 19 chromosomes, there were three chromosome fusions and one chromosome fission. In the process of coffee 11 chromosomes formation, 10 chromosome fusions occurred. During the process, we inferred that satellite chromosomes formed by telomeres from the same or different chromosomes were produced; and the lost of them resulted in chromosome number reduction Conclusions Notably, we found that the major fusion mode of chromosomes in coffee is end-end joining, which is well explained by telomere-centric model, shared by grape and possibly by many other eudicots. This is contrastively different from the observation of monocot plants like grasses, in which nested chromosome fusions often occurred. The present work will help to understand the structural and functional innovations of plant chromosomes.