Development of novel low-copy nuclear markers for Hieraciinae (Asteraceae) and their perspective for other tribes

 Premise of the study: The development of three low-copy nuclear markers for low taxonomic level phylogenies in Asteraceae with emphasis on the subtribe Hieraciinae is reported.  Methods and Results: Marker candidates were selected by comparing a Lactuca complementary DNA (cDNA) library with public DNA sequence databases. Interspecifi c variation and phylogenetic signal of the selected genes were investigated for diploid taxa from the subtribe Hieraciinae and compared to a reference phylogeny. Their ability to cross-amplify was assessed for other Asteraceae tribes. All three markers had higher variation (2.1 � 4.5 times) than the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) in Hieraciinae. Cross-amplifi cation was successful in at least seven other tribes of the Asteraceae. Only three cases indicating the presence of paralogs or pseudogenes were detected.  Conclusions: The results demonstrate the potential of these markers for phylogeny reconstruction in the Hieraciinae as well as in other Asteraceae tribes, especially for very closely related species.