A spatiotemporal resolution to genetic redundancy: MIR164 diversification coordinates development and metabolism in...

Whole-genome duplication (WGD) events create genetic redundancy, posing the evolutionary challenge of how paralogs escape functional overlap to drive innovation. Here, we demonstrate that the MIR164 family in Brassica oleracea resolves this redundancy through spatiotemporal niche partitioning. Following WGD, the family expanded to eight members, which subsequently underwent divergent selection-some preserved under purifying selection, while others showed signals of positive selection. This led to expression divergence, with Bol-MIR164a1 emerging as a key universally expressed paralog. CRISPR-Cas9 mutagenesis of Bol-MIR164a1 revealed its essential role in coordinating two pivotal traits: leaf serration and leaf coloration. Mutants exhibited enhanced leaf serration due to spatial deregulation of CUC2 at organ boundaries, concurrently with yellow-green leaves and elevated flavonoid accumulation. We mechanistically linked the metabolic phenotype to direct transactivation of the anthocyanidin reductase (ANR) promoter by NAC100, alongside its upregulation of chlorophyll catabolism genes. Our findings establish a paradigm in which spatial segregation of target gene expression domains enables a single, widely expressed miRNA paralog to resolve genetic redundancy by independently orchestrating distinct regulatory programs. This provides a fundamental framework for understanding complex trait evolution in polyploids. This allows a single miRNA locus to independently orchestrate both morphological patterning and metabolic programming, providing a fundamental framework for understanding complex trait evolution in polyploid crops.