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. 2013 Jul 15:14:476.
doi: 10.1186/1471-2164-14-476.

The miniature genome of a carnivorous plant Genlisea aurea contains a low number of genes and short non-coding sequences

Evgeny V Leushkin, Roman A Sutormin, Elena R Nabieva, Aleksey A Penin, Alexey S Kondrashov, Maria D Logacheva

The miniature genome of a carnivorous plant Genlisea aurea contains a low number of genes and short non-coding sequences

Evgeny V Leushkin et al. BMC Genomics. .

Abstract

Background: Genlisea aurea (Lentibulariaceae) is a carnivorous plant with unusually small genome size - 63.6 Mb - one of the smallest known among higher plants. Data on the genome sizes and the phylogeny of Genlisea suggest that this is a derived state within the genus. Thus, G. aurea is an excellent model organism for studying evolutionary mechanisms of genome contraction.

Results: Here we report sequencing and de novo draft assembly of G. aurea genome. The assembly consists of 10,687 contigs of the total length of 43.4 Mb and includes 17,755 complete and partial protein-coding genes. Its comparison with the genome of Mimulus guttatus, another representative of higher core Lamiales clade, reveals striking differences in gene content and length of non-coding regions.

Conclusions: Genome contraction was a complex process, which involved gene loss and reduction of lengths of introns and intergenic regions, but not intron loss. The gene loss is more frequent for the genes that belong to multigenic families indicating that genetic redundancy is an important prerequisite for genome size reduction.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Total length of Genlisea aurea contigs, split into four bins according to the coverage. For each bin, the total lengths of contigs with the best BLAST hits in different groups of species are shown by color (A). Relative contributions of contigs with the best BLAST hits in different groups of species to the total lengths of contigs with different coverages (B).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Distribution of GO-categories for biological process in Arabidopsis thaliana (left) and Genlisea aurea (right).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Genome assembly size (A) and distribution of exon, intron and intergenic sequence lengths for Genlisea aurea, Mimulus guttatus and Solanum lycopersicum (B).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Number of genes per gene family in Genlisea aurea and other plant species as assessed by OrthoMCL.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Phylogenetic trees for Genlisea aurea and related species based on synonymous (A) and non-synonymous (B) substitutions.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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