Promiscuous Organellar DNA

From cyanobacteria and cyanophages to chloroplasts: the fate of the genomes of oxyphototrophs and the genes encoding photosystem II proteins

Chloroplasts are the result of endosymbiosis of cyanobacterial organisms with proto-eukaryotes. The psbA, psbD and psbO genes are present in all oxyphototrophs and encode the D1/D2 proteins of photosystem II (PSII) and PsbO, respectively. PsbO is a peripheral protein that stabilizes the O2-evolving complex in PSII. Of these genes, psbA and psbD remained in the chloroplastic genome, while psbO was transferred to the nucleus. The genomes of selected cyanobacteria, chloroplasts and cyanophages carrying psbA and psbD, respectively, were analysed. The highest density of genes and coding sequences (CDSs) was estimated for the genomes of cyanophages, cyanobacteria and chloroplasts. The synonymous mutation rate (rS) of psbA and psbD in chloroplasts remained almost unchanged and is lower than that of psbO. The results indicate that the decreasing genome size in chloroplasts is more similar to the genome reduction observed in contemporary endosymbiotic organisms than in streamlined genomes of free-living cyanobacteria. The rS of atpA, which encodes the α-subunit of ATP synthase in chloroplasts, suggests that psbA and psbD, and to a lesser extent psbO, are ancient and conservative and arose early in the evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis. The role of cyanophages in the evolution of oxyphototrophs and chloroplastic genomes is discussed.

Diverse trajectories of plastome degradation in holoparasitic Cistanche and genomic location of the lost plastid genes

The plastid genomes (plastomes) of non-photosynthetic plants generally undergo gene loss and pseudogenization. Despite massive plastomes reported in different parasitism types of the broomrape family (Orobanchaceae), more plastomes representing different degradation patterns in a single genus are expected to be explored. Here, we sequence and assemble the complete plastomes of three holoparasitic Cistanche species (C. salsa, C. mongolica, and C. sinensis) and compare them with the available plastomes of Orobanchaceae. We identified that the diverse degradation trajectories under purifying selection existed among three Cistanche clades, showing obvious size differences in the entire plastome, long single copy region, and non-coding region, and different patterns of the retention/loss of functional genes. With few exceptions of putatively functional genes, massive plastid fragments, which have been lost and transferred into the mitochondrial or nuclear genomes, are non-functional. In contrast to the equivalents of the Orobanche species, some plastid-derived genes with diverse genomic locations are found in Cistanche. The early and initially diverged clades in different genera such as Cistanche and Aphyllon possess obvious patterns of plastome degradation, suggesting that such key lineages should be considered prior to comparative analysis of plastome evolution, especially in the same genus.

Massive intracellular gene transfer during plastid genome reduction in nongreen Orobanchaceae

Plastid genomes (plastomes) of nonphotosynthetic plants experience extensive gene losses and an acceleration of molecular evolutionary rates. Here, we inferred the mechanisms and timing of reductive genome evolution under relaxed selection in the broomrape family (Orobanchaceae). We analyzed the plastomes of several parasites with a major focus on the genus Orobanche using genome-descriptive and Bayesian phylogenetic-comparative methods. Besides this, we scanned the parasites' other cellular genomes to trace the fate of all genes that were purged from their plastomes. Our analyses indicate that the first functional gene losses occurred within 10 Myr of the transition to obligate parasitism in Orobanchaceae, and that the physical plastome reduction proceeds by small deletions that accumulate over time. Evolutionary rate shifts coincide with the genomic reduction process in broomrapes, suggesting that the shift of selectional constraints away from photosynthesis to other molecular processes alters the plastid rate equilibrium. Most of the photosynthesis-related genes or fragments of genes lost from the plastomes of broomrapes have survived in their nuclear or mitochondrial genomes as the results of multiple intracellular transfers and subsequent fragmentation. Our findings indicate that nonessential DNA is eliminated much faster in the plastomes of nonphotosynthetic parasites than in their other cellular genomes.