Exploring the plastid genome disparity of liverworts

Abstract

Sequencing the plastid genomes of land plants provides crucial improvements to our understanding of the plastome evolution of land plants. Although the number of available complete plastid genome sequences has rapidly increased in the recent years, only a few sequences have been yet released for the three bryophyte lineages, namely hornworts, liverworts, and mosses. Here, we explore the disparity of the plastome structure of liverworts by increasing the number of sequenced liverwort plastomes from five to 18. The expanded sampling included representatives of all major lineages of liverworts including the genus Haplomitrium. The disparity of the liverwort genomes was compared with other 2386 land plant plastomes with emphasis on genome size and GC‐content. We found evidence for structural conservatism of the plastid genomes in liverworts and a trend towards reduced plastome sequence length in liverworts and derived mosses compared to other land plants, including hornworts and basal lineages of mosses. Furthermore, Aneura and Haplomitrium were distinct from other liverworts by an increased GC content, with the one found in Haplomitrium only second to the lycophyte Selaginella. The results suggest the hypothesis that liverworts and other land plants inherited and conserved the plastome structure of their most recent algal ancestors.

Mitochondrial genomes of the early land plant lineage liverworts (Marchantiophyta): conserved genome structure, and ongoing low frequency recombination

“…The structural stability of liverwort mt genomes, in accordance with the remarkable structural conservatism of liverwort plastomes [40], might also be shaped by nuclear encoded DSBR proteins that suppress the error-prone ectopic recombinations across small direct repeats during DSBR in mitochondrion and plastid [41]. We here characterized six frequently reported DSBR gene families in the transcriptome assemblies of 125 land plant representatives (Additional file 11: Table S6).…”

The complete chloroplast genome of Scapania ampliata Steph., 1897 (Scapaniaceae, Jungermanniales)

“…Geneious R11 11.0.5 (Biomatters Ltd, Auckland, New Zealand) was used for annotation based on S. ciliata chloroplast genome (NC_043786; Yu et al. 2019 ).…”

Sequencing of Organellar Genomes of Nowellia curvifolia (Cephaloziaceae Jungermanniales) Revealed the Smallest Plastome with Complete Gene Set and High Intraspecific Variation Suggesting Cryptic Speciation

“…Organellar genomes of early land plants are known from their stable structure and almost identical gene order present in all main evolutionary lineages [1][2][3][4][5], which include complex thalloids, simply thalloids, leafy and early divergent leafy liverworts from the order Treubiales and Haplomitriales. Despite the fact that the organellar genomes of model liverwort Marchantia polymorpha were among first sequenced plant plastomes [6] and mitogenomes [7], the number of complete genomes sequences was very limited, till the end of the second decade of XXI century, when several paper were published significantly expanding our knowledge about evolutionary dynamics of these molecules [2][3][4][5]. The current genomic resources comprise 61 mitogenomes and 59 plastomes complete sequences, but many liverwort families do not have their representatives.…”