Journal
GENOME BIOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
Volume 10, Issue 10, Pages 2663-2670Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/gbe/evy190
Keywords
Boraginales; gene loss; Lennoa madreporoides; parasitic plants; purifying selection; Pholisma arenarium; Tiquilia plicata
Categories
Funding
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [326439]
- Canada Foundation for Innovation [12810]
- Ontario Research Funds
- University of Toronto Graduate Expansion Funds
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The Lennoaceae, a small monophyletic plant family of root parasites endemic to the Americas, are one of the last remaining independently evolved lineages of parasitic angiosperms lacking a published plastome. In this study, we present the assembled and annotated plastomes of two species spanning the crown node of Lennoaceae, Lennoa madreporoides and Pholisma arenarium, as well as their close autotrophic relative from the sister family Ehretiaceae, Tiquilia plicata. We find that the plastomes of L. madreporoides and P. arenarium are similar in size and gene content, and substantially reduced compared to T. plicata, consistent with trends seen in other holoparasitic lineages. In particular, most plastid genes involved in photosynthesis function have been lost, whereas housekeeping genes (ribosomal protein-coding genes, rRNAs, and tRNAs) are retained. One notable exception is the persistence of a rbcL open reading frame in P. arenarium but not L. madreporoides suggesting a nonphotosynthetic function for this gene. Of the retained coding genes, d(N)/d(S) ratios indicate that some remain under purifying selection, whereas others show relaxed selection. Overall, this study supports the mounting evidence for convergent plastome evolution in flowering plants following the shift to heterotrophy.
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