The mitochondrial and chloroplast genomes of the green alga Haematococcus are made up of nearly identical repetitive sequences

Xi Zhang; Nicholas Bauman; Rob Brown; Toby H Richardson; Srividya Akella; Elizabeth Hann; Robert Morey; David Roy Smith

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2019.06.040

The mitochondrial and chloroplast genomes of the green alga Haematococcus are made up of nearly identical repetitive sequences

Curr Biol. 2019 Aug 5;29(15):R736-R737. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2019.06.040.

Authors

Xi Zhang¹, Nicholas Bauman², Rob Brown², Toby H Richardson², Srividya Akella², Elizabeth Hann², Robert Morey², David Roy Smith³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biology, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, N6A-5B7, Canada.
² Synthetic Genomics Inc., La Jolla, California, 92037, USA.
³ Department of Biology, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, N6A-5B7, Canada. Electronic address: dsmit242@uwo.ca.

PMID: 31386847
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2019.06.040

Abstract

The chlamydomonadalean green alga Haematococcus lacustris (strain UTEX 2505) has the largest chloroplast genome on record: 1352 kb with ∼90% non-coding DNA [1,2]. But what of the mitochondrial genome? Here we present sequencing, assembly, and analysis of the mitogenome that shows that it, too, is extremely expanded. What's more, the same repetitive elements have spread throughout the mitochondrial and chloroplast (or plastid) DNA (mtDNA and ptDNA, respectively), resulting in the situation whereby these two distinct organelle genomes are made up of nearly identical sequences.

Publication types

Letter

MeSH terms

Base Sequence
Chlorophyceae / genetics*
DNA, Mitochondrial / analysis
Genome, Chloroplast*
Genome, Mitochondrial*
Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid
Sequence Alignment

Substances

DNA, Mitochondrial