Shifts from cis -to trans -splicing of five mitochondrial introns in Tolypanthus maclurei

PeerJ

article

Runxian Yu¹  Chenyu Sun¹  Ying Liu¹  Renchao Zhou¹ 

[1] State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Plant Resources, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University

关键词: Intron evolution;    Mitogenome;    Trans-splicing;    Horizontal gene transfer;    Angiosperms;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.12260

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

Shifts from cis-to trans-splicing of mitochondrial introns tend to correlate with relative genome rearrangement rates during vascular plant evolution, as is particularly apparent in some lineages of gymnosperms. However, although many angiosperms have also relatively high mitogenomic rearrangement rates, very few cis-to trans-splicing shifts except for five trans-spliced introns shared in seed plants have been reported. In this study, we sequenced and characterized the mitogenome of Tolypanthus maclurei, a hemiparasitic plant from the family Loranthaceae (Santalales). The mitogenome was assembled into a circular chromosome of 256,961 bp long, relatively small compared with its relatives from Santalales. It possessed a gene content of typical angiosperm mitogenomes, including 33 protein-coding genes, three rRNA genes and ten tRNA genes. Plastid-derived DNA fragments took up 9.1% of the mitogenome. The mitogenome contained one group I intron (cox1i729) and 23 group II introns. We found shifts from cis-to trans-splicing of five additional introns in its mitogenome, of which two are specific in T. maclurei. Moreover, atp1 is a chimeric gene and phylogenetic analysis indicated that a 356 bp region near the 3′ end of atp1 of T. maclurei was acquired from Lamiales via horizontal gene transfer. Our results suggest that shifts to trans-splicing of mitochondrial introns may not be uncommon among angiosperms.

【 授权许可】

CC BY