Sex-chrom has been created by scientists and librarians
at the Institut Botànic de Barcelona: Joan Pere Pascual-Díaz, Manica
Balant, Iván Pérez-Lorenzo, Maria Pilar Alonso-Lifante, Sònia Garcia; at the Redined-Ministerio de Eduación, Cultura y Deporte: Karina Barros; at the Institute
of Biophysics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic:
Simona Barankova, Ales Kovarik, Vratislav Peska, Boris Vyskot, Bohuslav Janousek; at the Jagannath
University: Nusrat Sultana; at the Jan Evangeslita Purkyne University: Hana Malinska.
How to cite?
Baránková, S., Pascual-Díaz, J. P.,
Sultana, N., Alonso-Lifante, M. P., Balant, M., Barros, K., ... & Garcia,
S. (2020). Sex-chrom,
a database on plant sex chromosomes. New Phytologist, 227(6), 1594-1604.
Garcia, S., Janousek, B., Pascual-Dìaz, J. P., & Renner, S.S. (20--). Sex-chrom v2.0,
a database of green plant species with sex chromosomes. Chromosoma, in press.
Recommended reviews
Vyskot, B., & Hobza, R. (2004). Gender in plants: sex
chromosomes are emerging from the fog. TRENDS in Genetics, 20(9), 432-438.
Jamilena, M., Mariotti, B., & Manzano, S. (2008). Plant sex chromosomes: molecular
structure and function. Cytogenetic and genome research, 120(3-4), 255-264.
Kejnovsky, E., Hobza, R., Cermak, T., Kubat, Z., & Vyskot, B. (2009). The role of repetitive DNA in structure
and evolution of sex chromosomes in plants. Heredity, 102(6), 533.
Pannell, J. R. (2017). Plant sex determination. Current Biology, 27(5), R191-R197.
Renner, S. S., & Müller, N. A. (2021). Plant sex chromosomes defy evolutionary models of expanding recombination suppression and genetic degeneration. Nature Plants, 7(4), 392-402.
Methodological approach
Publication search strategy
A search procedure was designed to retrieve
scientific documents which included plant sex chromosome data. The
databases used were Scopus and WOS (Web of Science). The search strategy
consisted of the name of each of the genera covered by the database and
several keywords such as "sex chromosome", “karyotype”, “cytotaxonomy”
or “cytogenetic*”. In the cases of some genera which had few occurrences,
the name of the family was added to the search strategy in order to find
possible results. During this process part of the initially recovered
documents were discarded and as a result 465 articles, books and meeting
proceedings were found to provide significant information of plant sexual
chromosomes.
Data mining
The information was manually extracted from
each source publication and when available (in most cases), the presence
and type of sex chromosomes were visually checked in the pictures. Data was
introduced in a Google Sheet and the following fields were filled for each
entry: (1) clade-upper (large plant group), (2) clade-lower (monocots, eudicots and other divisions), (3)
order, (4) family, (5) genus, (6) specific epithet, (7) species name, (8)
infraspecific category, (9) taxonomic status, (10) accepted name, (11) accepted
authorship, (12) genome size, (13) sexual system, (14) chromosome number (2n),
(15) ploidy level, (16) sex determination mechanism, (17) sex chromosomes male,
(18) sex chromosomes female, (19) heteromorphic or homomorphic sex chromosomes,
(20) source, (21) method for the primary characterisation of sex determining
system, (22) miscellaneous genomic information, (23) source (miscellaneous).
How to use
Sex-chrom includes 689 data entries. Each entry is ascribed to a
plant species, genus, family, order or class. The easiest way to use the
database is by inserting the name of a genus or a species in the search box.
Certain groups for which more specific information is available (Asparagus officinalis,
Cannabis sativa, Carica papaya, Fragaria, Humulus, Marchantia polymorpha,
Mercurialis annua, Populus, Rumex acetosa and Silene latifolia) can be accessed
by browsing in their own sections.
