EVOLUTION OF FRACTION-1 PROTEIN IN THE GENUS LYCOPERSICON

The large- and small-subunit polypeptide composition of fraction 1 protein contained in seven species of Lycopersicon and Solanum pennellii was determined by electrofocusing. The eight species of protein had large subunits composed of three polypeptides separated by about 0.05 pH unit, but there was no difference in the isoelectric points of the clusters of three polypeptides. By this criterion, no surviving mutations have appeared in the extranuclear DNA coding for the cluster of large-subunit polypeptides during a period of evolution which generated the eight species of plants. The genus Lycopersicon appears to be much younger than its sister genus Nicotiana in the family Solanaceae, where four types of polypeptide clusters have evolved. Three different small-subunit polypeptides whose isoelectric points are coded by nuclear DNA have arisen among the seven Lycopersicon species, and L. hirsutum and S. pennellii have proteins containing single polypeptides and are therefore considered older than L. chilense, L. chimielewskii, and L. parviflorum, whose proteins contain two polypeptides. L. cheesemanii, L. pimpinellifolium, and L. esculentum (and probably L. peruvianum) seem to be the most recently evolved species since their fraction 1 proteins have small subunits composed of three polypeptides. © 1979 Plenum Publishing Corporation.