Evolution of alcohol dehydrogenase genes in the palm and grass families

Abstract

The alcohol dehydrogenase (Adh; alcohol:NAD+ oxidoreductase, EC 1.1.1.1) gene family has two or three loci in a broad array of angiosperm species. The relative stability in the number of Adh loci led Gottlieb [Gottlieb, L. D. (1982) Science 216, 373-380] to propose that the Adh gene family arose from an ancient gene duplication. In this study, the isolation of three loci from the California fan palm (Washingtonia robusta) is reported. The three loci from palm are highly diverged. One palm Adh gene, referred to here as adhB, has been completely sequenced, including 950 nucleotides of the upstream regulatory region. For the second locus, adhA, 81% of the exon sequence is complete. Both show the same basic structure as grass Adh genes in terms of intron number and intron location. The third locus, adhC, for which only a small amount of sequence is available (12% of exon sequence) appears to be more highly diverged. Comparison of the Adh gene families from palms and grasses shows that the adh1 and adh2 genes of grasses, and the adhA and adhB genes of palms, arose by duplication following the divergence of the two families. This finding suggests that the multiple Adh loci in different monocot lineages are not the result of a single ancestral duplication but, rather, of multiple duplication events.