Exploring Structural Plastome Evolution in Asterales: Insights from Off-Target Hybrid Enrichment Data on the Small...

Area of Science:

• Plant evolutionary biology
• Comparative genomics
• Phylogenomics

Background:

• Plastid genome (plastome) data is crucial for plant evolutionary studies.
• While generally conserved, plastome structure varies in some angiosperm lineages, notably the Asterales.
• Previous studies have documented structural rearrangements within Asterales plastomes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the recovery of plastid loci from off-target reads generated by hybrid enrichment techniques.
• To analyze structural variations and evolutionary relationships within the Asterales order using recovered plastome data.
• To assess the feasibility of using off-target data for plastome reconstruction.

Main Methods:

• Sampling of 63 Asterales species from existing studies.
• Assembly and annotation of complete and partial plastomes using custom pipelines.
• Phylogenomic analyses to infer evolutionary relationships.
• Comparative genomics to identify structural rearrangements, focusing on the small single-copy region.

Main Results:

• Successfully retrieved plastid information from 60 out of 63 sampled species.
• Assembled complete and partial plastomes, including a complete plastome from Tithonia tubaeformis.
• Identified a ~6500 bp relocated fragment involving specific genes in two Campanulaceae lineages.
• Phylogenetic analyses yielded results congruent with previous studies.

Conclusions:

• Recovering plastid information from off-target hybrid enrichment data is feasible.
• The study provides valuable insights into structural plastome evolution within the Asterales.
• Off-target data can be a valuable resource for plastome reconstruction and evolutionary studies.