The complete plastid genome of Selaginella erythropus (Selaginellaceae), a species with distinctive giant chloroplasts

Chun-Lin Huang; Jian-Wei Liu; Jia-Fang Ho; Ying-Hsuan Sun; Chung-Shien Wu; Peter Chesson; Chiou-Rong Sheue

doi:10.1080/23802359.2021.1997114

The complete plastid genome of Selaginella erythropus (Selaginellaceae), a species with distinctive giant chloroplasts

Mitochondrial DNA B Resour. 2021 Nov 16;6(12):3369-3371. doi: 10.1080/23802359.2021.1997114. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Chun-Lin Huang¹, Jian-Wei Liu², Jia-Fang Ho¹, Ying-Hsuan Sun³, Chung-Shien Wu⁴, Peter Chesson^{2

5}, Chiou-Rong Sheue^{2

5}

Affiliations

¹ Laboratory of Molecular Phylogenetics, Department of Biology, National Museum of Natural Science, Taichung, Taiwan.
² Department of Life Sciences and Research Center for Global Change Biology, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan.
³ Department of Forestry, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan.
⁴ Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.
⁵ Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.

Abstract

The plastid genome of the deep-shade plant Selaginella erythropus, which has highly unusual chloroplasts, was characterized using Illumina pair-end sequencing. This plastome is 140,151 bp in length with a large single-copy region (LSC) of 56,133 bp, a small single-copy region (SSC) of 61,268 bp, and two direct repeats (DRs) of 11,375 bp. The overall GC content is 50.68%, while those of LSC, SSC, and DR are 48.96%, 50.3%, and 55.96%, respectively. The plastome contains 102 genes, including 76 protein-coding, 15 tRNA (12 tRNA species), and 8 rRNA genes (4 rRNA species). The phylogenetic analysis shows that S. erythropus is closely related to S. moellendorffii and S. doederleinii. This result is consistent with the previous phylogenetic relationship inferred from multiple plastid and nuclear loci. However, only S. erythropus has the two-zoned giant chloroplast, the bizonoplast. The plastome provides an excellent reference for understanding the unique chloroplast differentiation in Selaginellaceae.

Keywords: Bizonoplast; direct repeats; giant chloroplast; phylogenetic analysis; subgenus Stachygynandrum.

Grants and funding

This study is supported by Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan [MOST 107-2621-B-005-001; 109-2621-B-005 -002 -MY3]; visiting grant from Shu-Miaw Chaw, Academia Sinica [104-1-2-19-08].