Fine-scale mergers of chloroplast and mitochondrial genes create functional, transcompartmentally chimeric mitochondrial genes.

ABSTRACT: The mitochondrial genomes of flowering plants possess a promiscuous proclivity for taking up sequences from the chloroplast genome. All characterized chloroplast integrants exist apart from native mitochondrial genes, and only a few, involving chloroplast tRNA genes that have functionally supplanted their mitochondrial counterparts, appear to be of functional consequence. We developed a novel computational approach to search for homologous recombination (gene conversion) in a large number of sequences and applied it to 22 mitochondrial and chloroplast gene pairs, which last shared common ancestry some 2 billion years ago. We found evidence of recurrent conversion of short patches of mitochondrial genes by chloroplast homologs during angiosperm evolution, but no evidence of gene conversion

SUBMITTER: Hao W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2757801 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature