The Mitochondrial Genome of Chara vulgaris: Insights into the Mitochondrial DNA Architecture of the Last Common Ancestor of Green Algae and Land Plants[W]
Open Access
- 1 August 2003
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in Plant Cell
- Vol. 15 (8) , 1888-1903
- https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.013169
Abstract
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has undergone radical changes during the evolution of green plants, yet little is known about the dynamics of mtDNA evolution in this phylum. Land plant mtDNAs differ from the few green algal mtDNAs that have been analyzed to date by their expanded size, long spacers, and diversity of introns. We have determined the mtDNA sequence of Chara vulgaris (Charophyceae), a green alga belonging to the charophycean order (Charales) that is thought to be the most closely related alga to land plants. This 67,737-bp mtDNA sequence, displaying 68 conserved genes and 27 introns, was compared with those of three angiosperms, the bryophyte Marchantia polymorpha, the charophycean alga Chaetosphaeridium globosum (Coleochaetales), and the green alga Mesostigma viride. Despite important differences in size and intron composition, Chara mtDNA strikingly resembles Marchantia mtDNA; for instance, all except 9 of 68 conserved genes lie within blocks of colinear sequences. Overall, our genome comparisons and phylogenetic analyses provide unequivocal support for a sister-group relationship between the Charales and the land plants. Only four introns in land plant mtDNAs appear to have been inherited vertically from a charalean algar ancestor. We infer that the common ancestor of green algae and land plants harbored a tightly packed, gene-rich, and relatively intron-poor mitochondrial genome. The group II introns in this ancestral genome appear to have spread to new mtDNA sites during the evolution of bryophytes and charalean green algae, accounting for part of the intron diversity found in Chara and land plant mitochondria.Keywords
This publication has 62 references indexed in Scilit:
- Comparative and functional anatomy of group II catalytic introns — a reviewPublished by Elsevier ,2003
- The Mitochondrial nad2 Gene as a Novel Marker Locus for Phylogenetic Analysis of Early Land Plants: A Comparative Analysis in MossesMolecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 2001
- T-coffee: a novel method for fast and accurate multiple sequence alignment 1 1Edited by J. ThorntonJournal of Molecular Biology, 2000
- A molecular phylogeny of bryophytes based on nucleotide sequences of the mitochondrialnad5 geneÖsterreichische botanische Zeitschrift, 1999
- tRNAscan-SE: A Program for Improved Detection of Transfer RNA Genes in Genomic SequenceNucleic Acids Research, 1997
- CLUSTAL W: improving the sensitivity of progressive multiple sequence alignment through sequence weighting, position-specific gap penalties and weight matrix choiceNucleic Acids Research, 1994
- Complete Sequence of the Mitochondrial DNA of the Chlorophyte Alga Prototheca wickerhamii: Gene Content and Genome OrganizationJournal of Molecular Biology, 1994
- Gene organization deduced from the complete sequence of liverwort Marchantia polymorpha mitochondrial DNAJournal of Molecular Biology, 1992
- Basic local alignment search toolJournal of Molecular Biology, 1990
- The general stochastic model of nucleotide substitutionJournal of Theoretical Biology, 1990