Recently, Ancient genome duplications during the evolution of kiwifruit (Actinidia)  was discovered by Tao Shi, a PhD Candidates supervised by Prof. Hongwen Huang from Laboratory of Plant Conservation genetics of Wuhan Botanical Garden, CAS.

In this study, public available information about the expressed sequence tags (ESTs) for members of the Actinidiaceae and related Ericales were analyzed. The study provided strong evidences for the hypothesis that there were three ancient whole-genome duplications in Actinidia during its evolution. Among the three whole-genome duplicatons, one was specific in the ancestry of Actinidia Lindl, one was shared by both Actinidia Lindl and Clematoclethra Maxim, while  the third one occurred in all taxa that were examined.

The results have been published in the Annals of Botany (2010, 106:497–504).

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 (Laboratory of Plant Conservation genetics, Zuozhou Li)