Divergent intron conservation in the mitochondrial nad2 gene: signatures for the three bryophyte classes (mosses,liverworts, and hornworts) and the lycophytes |
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Authors: | Pruchner Dagmar Beckert Susanne Muhle Hermann Knoop Volker |
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Institution: | Molekulare Botanik, Universit?t Ulm, D-89069 Ulm, Germany. |
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Abstract: | The slow-evolving mitochondrial DNAs of plants have potentially conserved information on the phylogenetic branching of the
earliest land plants. We present the nad2 gene structures in hornworts and liverworts and in the presumptive earliest-branching
vascular land plant clade, the Lycopodiopsida. Taken together with the recently obtained nad2 data for mosses, each class
of bryophytes presents another pattern of angiosperm-type introns conserved in nad2: intron nad2i1 in mosses; intron nad2i3
in liverworts; and both introns, nad2i3 and nad2i4, in hornworts. The lycopods Isoetes and Lycopodium show diverging intron
conservation and feature a unique novel intron, termed nad2i3b. Hence, mitochondrial introns in general are positionally stable
in the bryophytes and provide significant intraclade phylogenetic information, but the nad2 introns, in particular, cannot
resolve the interclade relationships of the bryophyte classes and to the tracheophytes. The necessity for RNA editing to reconstitute
conserved codon entities in nad2 is obvious for all clades except the marchantiid liverworts. Finally, we find that particularly
small group II introns appear as a general feature of the Isoetes chondriome. Plant mitochondrial peculiarities such as RNA
editing frequency, U-to-C type of RNA editing, and small group II introns appear to be genus-specific rather than gene-specific
features. |
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