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Optimization and Comparative Analysis of Plant Organellar DNA Enrichment Methods Suitable for Next-generation Sequencing
Published on: July 28, 2017
DNA Repair and the Stability of the Plant Mitochondrial Genome
Nicolas Chevigny1, Déborah Schatz-Daas1, Frédérique Lotfi1
1Institut de biologie moléculaire des plantes, CNRS, Université de Strasbourg, 67081 Strasbourg, France.
Abstract:
The mitochondrion stands at the center of cell energy metabolism. It contains its own genome, the mtDNA, that is a relic of its prokaryotic symbiotic ancestor. In plants, the mitochondrial genetic information influences important agronomic traits including fertility, plant vigor, chloroplast function, and cross-compatibility. Plant mtDNA has remarkable characteristics: It is much larger than the mtDNA of other eukaryotes and evolves very rapidly in structure. This is because of recombination activities that generate alternative mtDNA configurations, an important reservoir of genetic diversity that promotes rapid mtDNA evolution. On the other hand, the high incidence of ectopic recombination leads to mtDNA instability and the expression of gene chimeras, with potential deleterious effects. In contrast to the structural plasticity of the genome, in most plant species the mtDNA coding sequences evolve very slowly, even if the organization of the genome is highly variable. Repair mechanisms are probably responsible for such low mutation rates, in particular repair by homologous recombination. Herein we review some of the characteristics of plant organellar genomes and of the repair pathways found in plant mitochondria. We further discuss how homologous recombination is involved in the evolution of the plant mtDNA.
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