Evolution of mitochondrial genomes in yeast: a study of mitochondrial divergence in two closely related species, Saccharomyces douglasii and Saccharomyces cerevisiae

The transcriptome of Candida albicans mitochondria and the evolution of organellar transcription units in yeasts

Background

Yeasts show remarkable variation in the organization of their mitochondrial genomes, yet there is little experimental data on organellar gene expression outside few model species. Candida albicans is interesting as a human pathogen, and as a representative of a clade that is distant from the model yeasts Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Unlike them, it encodes seven Complex I subunits in its mtDNA. No experimental data regarding organellar expression were available prior to this study.

Methods

We used high-throughput RNA sequencing and traditional RNA biology techniques to study the mitochondrial transcriptome of C. albicans strains BWP17 and SN148.

Results

The 14 protein-coding genes, two ribosomal RNA genes, and 24 tRNA genes are expressed as eight primary polycistronic transcription units. We also found transcriptional activity in the noncoding regions, and antisense transcripts that could be a part of a regulatory mechanism. The promoter sequence is a variant of the nonanucleotide identified in other yeast mtDNAs, but some of the active promoters show significant departures from the consensus. The primary transcripts are processed by a tRNA punctuation mechanism into the monocistronic and bicistronic mature RNAs. The steady state levels of various mature transcripts exhibit large differences that are a result of posttranscriptional regulation. Transcriptome analysis allowed to precisely annotate the positions of introns in the RNL (2), COB (2) and COX1 (4) genes, as well as to refine the annotation of tRNAs and rRNAs. Comparative study of the mitochondrial genome organization in various Candida species indicates that they undergo shuffling in blocks usually containing 2–3 genes, and that their arrangement in primary transcripts is not conserved. tRNA genes with their associated promoters, as well as GC-rich sequence elements play an important role in these evolutionary events.

Conclusions

The main evolutionary force shaping the mitochondrial genomes of yeasts is the frequent recombination, constantly breaking apart and joining genes into novel primary transcription units. The mitochondrial transcription units are constantly rearranged in evolution shaping the features of gene expression, such as the presence of secondary promoter sites that are inactive, or act as “booster” promoters, simplified transcriptional regulation and reliance on posttranscriptional mechanisms.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-015-2078-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

A complete sequence of Saccharomyces paradoxus mitochondrial genome that restores the respiration in S. cerevisiae

We determined the complete sequence of 71 355-bp-long mitochondrial genome from Saccharomyces paradoxus entirely by direct sequencing of purified mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). This mtDNA possesses the same features as its close relative Saccharomyces cerevisiae - A + T content 85.9%, set of genes coding for the three components of cytochrome oxidase, cytochrome b, three subunits of ATPase, both ribosomal subunits, gene for ribosomal protein, rnpB gene, tRNA package (24) and yeast genetic code. Genes are interrupted by nine group I and group II introns, two of which are in positions unknown in S. cerevisiae, but recognized in Saccharomyces pastorianus. The gene products are related to S. cerevisiae, and the identity of amino acid residues varies from 100% for cox2 to 83% for rps3. The remarkable differences from S. cerevisiae are (1) different gene order (translocation of trnF-trnT1-trnV-cox3-trnfM-rnpb-trnP and transposition of trnW-rns), (2) occurrence of two unusual GI introns, (3) eight active ori elements, and (4) reduced number of GC clusters and divergent intergenic spacers. Despite these facts, the sequenced S. paradoxus mtDNA introduced to S. cerevisiae was able to support the respiratory function to the same extent as the original mtDNAs.

A comparative analysis of mitochondrial genomes in Orthoptera (Arthropoda: Insecta) and genome descriptions of three grasshopper species

The complete sequences of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from the three new grasshopper species, Euchorthippus fusigeniculatus, Mekongiana xiangchengensis and Mekongiella xizangensis, consisting of 15772 bp, 15567 bp, and 15885 bp, respectively, were analyzed and compared to mtDNAs from other 19 Orthoptera species obtained from GenBank. The three mitochondrial genomes contain a standard set of 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA genes, 2 ribosomal RNA genes. and an A+T-rich region in the same order as those of the other analyzed caeliferan species, but different from those of the ensiferan species by the rearrangement of trnD and trnK. The putative initiation codon for the cox1 gene is ATC in E. fusigeniculatus, CTG in M. xiangchengensis and CCG in M. xizangensis. All secondary structures of tRNA-Ser((AGN)) in the three species lack a DHU arm. In this study, we stressed the comparative analysis of the stem-loop secondary structure in A+T-rich region of all Orthoptera species available to date, and report new findings which may facilitate further investigation and better understanding of this secondary structure. Finally, we undertook a phylogenetic study of all Orthoptera species available from GenBank to date based on three different datasets using parsimony, maximum likelihood, and Bayesian inference. Our result showed that protein-coding genes (PCG) and amino acid sequences (PCG_PROT) provided good resolution of higher-level relationships within the Orthoptera, whereas ribosomal RNA genes (RIBO) perform poorly under different optimality criteria.

The mitochondrial genome of the wine yeast Hanseniaspora uvarum: a unique genome organization among yeast/fungal counterparts

The complete sequence of the apiculate wine yeast Hanseniaspora uvarum mtDNA has been determined and analysed. It is an extremely compact linear molecule containing the shortest functional region ever found in fungi (11 094 bp long), flanked by Type 2 telomeric inverted repeats. The latter contained a 2704-bp-long subterminal region and tandem repeats of 839-bp units. In consequence, a population of mtDNA molecules that differed at the number of their telomeric reiterations was detected. The functional region of the mitochondrial genome coded for 32 genes, which included seven subunits of respiratory complexes and ATP synthase (the genes encoding for NADH oxidoreductase subunits were absent), two rRNAs and 23 tRNA genes which recognized codons for all amino acids. A single intron interrupted the cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 gene. A number of reasons contributed towards its strikingly small size, namely: (1) the remarkable size reduction (by >40%) of the rns and rnl genes; (2) that most tRNA genes and five of the seven protein-coding genes were the shortest among known yeast homologs; and (3) that the noncoding regions were restricted to 5.1% of the genome. In addition, the genome showed multiple changes in the orientation of transcription and the gene order differed drastically from other yeasts. When all protein coding gene sequences were considered as one unit and were compared with the corresponding molecules from all other complete mtDNAs of yeasts, the phylogenetic trees constructed robustly supported its placement basal to the yeast species of the 'Saccharomyces complex', demonstrating the advantage of this approach over single-gene or multigene approaches of unlinked genes.