Analysis of Hypervariable Chloroplast Microsatellites in Pinus Halepensis Reveals a Dramatic Genetic Bottleneck

The analysis of uniparentally inherited genomes can provide a deep insight into the evolutionary histories of populations. Molecular lineages are not perturbed as a consequence of the absence of recombination and relationships among them can be ascertained on the basis of their phylogenetic divergence (1). Sequence analysis of the hypervariable mitochondrial control region (see Chapter 21.5, for example) has made possible the study of the dynamics, relationships and history of populations in many animal species, including humans (2). Such a tool has not been available for the analysis of plant populations because of the unstable structure of mitochondrial plant genomes and the high degree of sequence conservation of chloroplast genomes.