Phylogeny of Korean Rubus (Rosaceae) based on the second intron of the LEAFY gene

The second intron of the LEAFY gene was used for phylogenetic analysis of Rubus (Rosaceae). The LEAFY gene is conserved among a wide variety of plants and is known to be involved in the morphological evolution of plants. Sequence comparison of LEAFY homologues revealed the phylogenetic relationships of previously unresolved taxa, suggesting the usefulness of this marker rather than the ITS region for representing nuclear gene trees. In addition, a combined analysis of the trnL/F intergenic region of chloroplast DNA and the second intron of the LEAFY gene yielded more imformative data. Based on the data, it was inferred that evolution proceeded from herbs to woody plants, compound leaf to simple leaf, and pink petal to white petal within Korean Rubus taxa. Moreover, the LEAFY and trnL/F combined phylogeny had similar topology with the Rubus classification based on morphological characteristics. Therefore, our results indicate that LEAFY and trnL/F were valuable regions for analyzing the phylogenetic relationships among the Rubus taxa in Korea.