Abstract
Background
Gene transfer between the plastid and mitochondrial genomes has been reported in several lineages of the legume family (Leguminosae or Fabaceae). However, it is not clear whether these events happened in other families of the order Fabales. We herein generated a high-quality mitochondrial genome of Suriana maritima in the family Surianaceae, which is closely related to Leguminosae and distributed mainly in extreme environments of tropical coral islands, to understand the gene transfers between orgenelle genomes of S. maritima and the structural and functional evolution of mitogenomes in Fabales.
Results
We combined Illumina and Nanopore technologies to assemble the mitogenome of S. maritima. The mitogenome was 458,738 bp in length and contained 39 protein-coding, three ribosomal RNA, and 20 transfer RNA genes. A number of sequences derived from the chloroplast genome of S. maritima were detected in the mitogenome, including 41 plastid genes among 83 mitochondrial plastid DNA sequences with a total length of 30,834 bp. Transferred genes accounted for 18.8% of the plastid genome and 6.7% of the mitogenome, and these estimates were much higher than those in previous studies of Fabales.
Conclusions
In addition to providing a high-quality mitogenome of an additional species in Fabales and the first species in Surianaceae, S. maritima, our findings advance our understanding of gene transfer between organelle genomes.