Silene latifolia: the classical model to study heteromorphic sex chromosomes

Abstract

This review summarizes older as well as recent data about the model dioecious plant Silene latifolia. This plant has been the subject of more than one hundred years of research efforts and its most conspicuous property is huge and well differentiated heteromorphic sex chromosomes, XX in females and XY in males. Due to this property the S. latifolia sex chromosomes have been often used for cytogenetic studies as well as for flow sorting and laser microdissection. Nowadays S. latifolia is the focus of genomic studies, molecular mapping, phylogenetic and population genetics analyses.