The Unique Evolutionary Trajectory and Dynamic Conformations of DR and IR/DR-Coexisting Plastomes of the Early Vascular Plant Selaginellaceae (Lycophyte)

作  者:Zhang HR, Xiang QP*, Zhang XC*
影响因子:3.94
刊物名称:Genome Biology and Evolution
出版年份:2019
卷:11  期:4  页码:1258-1274

论文摘要:

Both direct repeats (DR) and inverted repeats (IR) are documented in the published plastomes of Selaginellaspecies indicating the unusual and diverse plastome structure in the family Selaginellaceae. In this study, we newly sequenced complete plastomes of seven species from five main lineages of Selaginellaceae and also resequenced three species (Selaginella tamariscinaSelaginella uncinata, and Selaginella moellendorffii) to explore the evolutionary trajectory of Selaginellaceae plastomes. Our results showed that the plastomes of Selaginellaceae vary remarkably in size, gene contents, gene order, and GC contents. Notably, both DR and IR structures existed in the plastomes of Selaginellaceae with DR structure being an ancestral state. The occurrence of DR structure was at 257 Ma and remained in most subgenera of Selaginellaceae, whereas IR structure only reoccurred in Selaginella sect. Lepidophyllae (143 Ma) and Selaginella subg. Heterostachys (19 Ma). The presence of a pair of large repeats psbK-trnQ, together with DR/IR region in Selaginella bisulcataSelaginella pennataS. uncinata, and Selaginella hainanensis, could frequently mediate diverse homologous recombination and create approximately equal stoichiometric isomers (IR/DR-coexisting) and subgenomes. High proportion of repeats is presumably responsible for the dynamic IR/DR-coexisting plastomes, which possess a lower synonymous substitution rate (dS) compared with DR-possessing and IR-possessing plastomes. We propose that the occurrence of DR structure, together with few repeats, is possibly selected to keep the stability of plastomes and the IR/DR-coexisting plastomes also reached an equilibrium in plastome organization through highly efficient homologous recombination to maintain stability.