Chloroplast DNA Sequence Homologies among Vascular Plants

The extent of sequence conservation in the chloroplast genome of higher plants has been investigated. Supercoiled chloroplast DNA, prepared from pea seedlings, was labeled in vitro and used as a probe in reassociation experiments with a high concentration of total DNAs extracted from several angiosperms, gymnosperms, and lower vascular plants. In each case the probe reassociation was accelerated, demonstrating that some chloroplast sequences have been highly conserved throughout the evolution of vascular plants. Only among the flowering plants were distinct levels of cross-reaction with the pea chloroplast probe evident; broad bean and barley exhibited the highest and lowest levels, respectively. With the hydroxylapatite assay these levels decreased with a decrease in probe fragment length (from 1,860 to 735 bases), indicating that many conserved sequences in the chloroplast genome are separated by divergent sequences on a rather fine scale. Despite differences observed in levels of homology with the hydroxylapatite assay, S1 nuclease analysis of heteroduplexes showed that outside of the pea family the extent of sequence relatedness between the probe and various heterologous DNAs is approximately the same: 30%. In our interpretation, the fundamental changes in the chloroplast genome during angiosperm evolution involved the rearrangement of this 30% with respect to the more rapidly changing sequences of the genome. These rearrangements may have been more extensive in dicotyledons than in monocotyledons. We have estimated the amount of conserved and divergent DNA interspersed between one another.