Mitochondrial and plastid genomes show a wide array of architectures, varying immensely in size, structure, and content. Some organelle DNAs have even developed elaborate eccentricities, such as scrambled coding regions, nonstandard genetic codes, and convoluted modes of posttranscriptional modification and editing. Here, we compare and contrast the breadth of genomic complexity between mitochondrial and plastid chromosomes. Both organelle genomes have independently evolved many of the same features and taken on similar genomic embellishments, often within the same species or lineage. This trend is most likely because the nuclear-encoded proteins mediating these processes eventually leak from one organelle into the other, leading to a high likelihood of processes appearing in both compartments in parallel. However, the complexity and intensity of genomic embellishments are consistently more pronounced for mitochondria than for plastids, even when they are found in both compartments. We explore the evolutionary forces responsible for these patterns and argue that organelle DNA repair processes, mutation rates, and population genetic landscapes are all important factors leading to the observed convergence and divergence in organelle genome architecture.E ndosymbiosis can dramatically impact cellular and genomic architectures. Mitochondria and plastids exemplify this point. Each of these two types of energy-producing eukaryotic organelle independently arose from the endosymbiosis, retention, and integration of a free-living bacterium into a host cell more than 1.4 billion years ago. Mitochondria came first, evolving from an alphaproteobacterial endosymbiont in an ancestor of all known living eukaryotes, and still exist, in one form or another (1), in all its descendants (2). Plastids came later, via the "primary" endosymbiosis of a cyanobacterium by the eukaryotic ancestor of the Archaeplastida, and then spread laterally to disparate groups through eukaryote-eukaryote endosymbioses (3). Consequently, a significant proportion of the identified eukaryotic diversity has a plastid.With few exceptions (1, 4), mitochondria and plastids contain genomes-chromosomal relics of the bacterial endosymbionts from which they evolved (2, 5). Mitochondrial and plastid DNAs (mtDNAs and ptDNAs) have many traits in common, which is not surprising given their similar evolutionary histories. Both are highly reduced relative to the genomes of extant, free-living alphaproteobacteria and cyanobacteria (2, 5), and both have transferred most of their genes to the host nuclear genome and are therefore reliant on nuclear-encoded, organelle-targeted proteins for the preservation of crucial biochemical pathways and many repair-, replication-, and expression-related functions (6). Both also show a wide and perplexing assortment of genomic architectures (7,8), which has spurred various evolutionary explanations, ranging from ancient inheritance from the RNA world to selection for greater "evolvability" (9, 10).At first glance, genomic complexity w...