Reconstruction of evolutionary trajectories of chromosomes unraveled independent genomic repatterning between Triticeae and Brachypodium

BACKGROUND: After polyploidization, a genome may experience large-scale genome-repatterning, featuring wide-spread DNA rearrangement and loss, and often chromosome number reduction. Grasses share a common tetraploidization, after which the originally doubled chromosome numbers reduced to different chromosome numbers among them. A telomere-centric reduction model was proposed previously to explain chromosome number reduction. With Brachpodium as an intermediate linking different major lineages of grasses and a model plant of the Pooideae plants, we wonder whether it mediated the evolution from ancestral grass karyotype to Triticeae karyotype. RESULTS: By inferring the homology among Triticeae, rice, and Brachpodium chromosomes, we reconstructed the evolutionary trajectories of the Triticeae chromosomes. By performing comparative genomics analysis with rice as a reference, we reconstructed the evolutionary trajectories of Pooideae plants, including Ae. Tauschii (2n = 14, DD), barley (2n = 14), Triticum turgidum (2n = 4x = 28, AABB), and Brachypodium (2n = 10). Their extant Pooidea and Brachypodium chromosomes were independently produced after sequential nested chromosome fusions in the last tens of millions of years, respectively, after their split from rice. More frequently than would be expected by chance, in Brachypodium, the ‘invading’ and ‘invaded’ chromosomes are homoeologs, originating from duplication of a common ancestral chromosome, that is, with more extensive DNA-level correspondence to one another than random chromosomes, nested chromosome fusion events between homoeologs account for three of seven cases in Brachypodium (P-value≈0.00078). However, this phenomenon was not observed during the formation of other Pooideae chromosomes. CONCLUSIONS: Notably, we found that the Brachypodium chromosomes formed through exclusively distinctive trajectories from those of Pooideae plants, and were well explained by the telomere-centric model. Our work will contribute to understanding the structural and functional innovation of chromosomes in different Pooideae lineages and beyond. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12864-019-5566-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.