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Down the Slippery Slope: Plastid Genome Evolution in Convolvulaceae

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Abstract

Cuscuta (dodder) is the only parasitic genus found in Convolvulaceae (morning-glory family). We used long PCR approach to obtain large portions of plastid genome sequence from Cuscuta sandwichiana in order to determine the size, structure, gene content, and synteny in the plastid genome of this Cuscuta species belonging to the poorly investigated holoparasitic subgenus Grammica. These new sequences are compared with the tobacco chloroplast genome, and, where data are available, with corresponding regions from taxa in the other Cuscuta subgenera. When all known plastid genome structural rearrangements in parasitic and nonparasitic Convolvulaceae are considered in a molecular phylogenetic framework, three categories of rearrangements in Cuscuta are revealed: plesiomorphic, autapomorphic, and synapomorphic. Many of the changes in Cuscuta, previously attributed to its parasitic mode of life, are better explained either as plesiomorphic conditions within the family, i.e., conditions shared with the rest of the Convolvulaceae, or, in most cases, autapomorphies of particular Cuscuta taxa, not shared with the rest of the species in the genus. The synapomorphic rearrangements are most likely to correlate with the parasitic lifestyle, because they represent changes found in Cuscuta exclusively. However, it appears that most of the affected regions, belonging to all of these three categories, have probably no function (e.g., introns) or are of unknown function (a number of open reading frames, the function of which, if any, has yet to be discovered).

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Dave Tank, Jeff Palmer, Joel McNeal, as well as Claude dePamphilis, and an anonymous reviewer for critical comments on the manuscript. This work was supported by the Karling Graduate Student Research Award from the Botanical Society of America, and the Research Award for Graduate Students from the American Society of Plant Taxonomists to S.S., the NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement grant DEB-0073396 to R.G.O. for S.S., and the NSF grant DEB-950984 to R.G.O.

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  1. Department of Biology, University of Washington, Box 355325, Seattle, WA, 98195-5325, USA

    Saša Stefanović & Richard G. Olmstead

  2. Department of Biology, University of Toronto at Mississauga, Mississauga, Ontario, L5L 1C6, Canada

    Saša Stefanović

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  1. Saša Stefanović
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Correspondence to Saša Stefanović.

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Stefanović, S., Olmstead, R.G. Down the Slippery Slope: Plastid Genome Evolution in Convolvulaceae. J Mol Evol 61, 292–305 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00239-004-0267-5

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