TY - JOUR T1 - Wide sampling of natural diversity identifies novel molecular signatures of C<sub>4</sub> photosynthesis JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/163097 SP - 163097 AU - Steven Kelly AU - Sarah Covshoff AU - Samart Wanchana AU - Vivek Thakur AU - W. Paul Quick AU - Yu Wang AU - Martha Ludwig AU - Richard Bruskiewich AU - Alisdair R. Fernie AU - Rowan F. Sage AU - Zhijian Tian AU - Zixian Yan AU - Jun Wang AU - Yong Zhang AU - Xin-Guang Zhu AU - Gane Ka-Shu Wong AU - Julian M. Hibberd Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/07/13/163097.abstract N2 - Much of biology is associated with convergent traits, and it is challenging to determine the extent to which underlying molecular mechanisms are shared across phylogeny. By analyzing plants representing eighteen independent origins of C4 photosynthesis, we quantified the extent to which this convergent trait utilises identical molecular mechanisms. We demonstrate that biochemical changes that characterise C4 species are recovered by this process, and expand the paradigm by four metabolic pathways not previously associated with C4 photosynthesis. Furthermore, we show that expression of many genes that distinguish C3 and C4 species respond to low CO2, providing molecular evidence that reduction in atmospheric CO2 was a driver for C4 evolution. Thus the origin and architecture of complex traits can be derived from transcriptome comparisons across natural diversity. ER -