Deciphering recursive polyploidization in Lamiales and reconstructing their chromosome evolutionary trajectories

Lamiales is an order of core eudicots with abundant diversity, and many Lamiales plants have important medicinal and ornamental values. Here, we comparatively reanalyzed 11 Lamiales species with well-assembled genome sequences and found evidence that Lamiales plants, in addition to a hexaploidization or whole-genome triplication (WGT) shared by core eudicots, experienced further polyploidization events, establishing new groups in the order. Notably, we identified a whole-genome duplication (WGD) occurred just before the split of Scrophulariaceae from the other Lamiales families, such as Acanthaceae, Bignoniaceae, and Lamiaceae, suggesting its likely being the causal reason for the establishment and fast divergence of these families. We also found that a WGT occurred ∼68 to 78 million years ago (Mya), near the split of Oleaceae from the other Lamiales families, implying that it may have caused their fast divergence and the establishment of the Oleaceae family. Then, by exploring and distinguishing intra- and intergenomic chromosomal homology due to recursive polyploidization and speciation, respectively, we inferred that the Lamiales ancestral cell karyotype had 11 proto-chromosomes. We reconstructed the evolutionary trajectories from these proto-chromosomes to form the extant chromosomes in each Lamiales plant under study. We must note that most of the inferred 11 proto-chromosomes, duplicated during a WGD thereafter, have been well preserved in jacaranda (Jacaranda mimosifolia) genome, showing the credibility of the present inference implementing a telomere-centric chromosome repatterning model. These efforts are important to understand genome repatterning after recursive polyploidization, especially shedding light on the origin of new plant groups and angiosperm cell karyotype evolution.