TY - JOUR
T1 - Transcriptomes of the parasitic plant family orobanchaceae reveal surprising conservation of chlorophyll synthesis
AU - Wickett, Norman J.
AU - Honaas, Loren A.
AU - Wafula, Eric K.
AU - Das, Malay
AU - Huang, Kan
AU - Wu, Biao
AU - Landherr, Lena
AU - Timko, Michael P.
AU - Yoder, John
AU - Westwood, James H.
AU - Depamphilis, Claude W.
N1 - Funding Information:
Support by the National Science Foundation Plant Genome Research Program (IOS #0701748 to J.H.W., C.W.d., M.P.T., and J.Y.) for our work on the Parasitic Plant Genome Project, with additional support from the US Department of Agriculture (Hatch project number 135657 to J.H.W.), is gratefully acknowledged. We thank Danny Joel for Phelipanche seeds, Paula Ralph and Verlyn Stromberg for laboratory assistance, Lynn Tomsho and Stephan Schuster for 454 sequencing, and Yongde Bao for Illumina sequencing. The Mimulus guttatus sequence data were produced by the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute ( http://www.jgi.doe.gov/ ) in collaboration with the user community.
PY - 2011/12/20
Y1 - 2011/12/20
N2 - Parasitism in flowering plants has evolved at least 11 times [1]. Only one family, Orobanchaceae, comprises all major nutritional types of parasites: facultative, hemiparasitic (partially photosynthetic), and holoparasitic (nonphotosynthetic) [2]. Additionally, the family includes Lindenbergia, a nonparasitic genus sister to all parasitic Orobanchaceae [3-6]. Parasitic Orobanchaceae include species with severe economic impacts: Striga (witchweed), for example, affects over 50 million hectares of crops in sub-Saharan Africa, causing more than $3 billion in damage annually [7]. Although gene losses and increased substitution rates have been characterized for parasitic plant plastid genomes [5, 8-11], the nuclear genome and transcriptome remain largely unexplored. The Parasitic Plant Genome Project (PPGP; http://ppgp.huck.psu.edu/) [2] is leveraging the natural variation in Orobanchaceae to explore the evolution and genomic consequences of parasitism in plants through a massive transcriptome and gene discovery project involving Triphysaria versicolor (facultative hemiparasite), Striga hermonthica (obligate hemiparasite), and Phelipanche aegyptiaca (Orobanche [12]; holoparasite). Here we present the first set of large-scale genomic resources for parasitic plant comparative biology. Transcriptomes of above-ground tissues reveal that, in addition to the predictable loss of photosynthesis-related gene expression in P. aegyptiaca, the nonphotosynthetic parasite retains an intact, expressed, and selectively constrained chlorophyll synthesis pathway.
AB - Parasitism in flowering plants has evolved at least 11 times [1]. Only one family, Orobanchaceae, comprises all major nutritional types of parasites: facultative, hemiparasitic (partially photosynthetic), and holoparasitic (nonphotosynthetic) [2]. Additionally, the family includes Lindenbergia, a nonparasitic genus sister to all parasitic Orobanchaceae [3-6]. Parasitic Orobanchaceae include species with severe economic impacts: Striga (witchweed), for example, affects over 50 million hectares of crops in sub-Saharan Africa, causing more than $3 billion in damage annually [7]. Although gene losses and increased substitution rates have been characterized for parasitic plant plastid genomes [5, 8-11], the nuclear genome and transcriptome remain largely unexplored. The Parasitic Plant Genome Project (PPGP; http://ppgp.huck.psu.edu/) [2] is leveraging the natural variation in Orobanchaceae to explore the evolution and genomic consequences of parasitism in plants through a massive transcriptome and gene discovery project involving Triphysaria versicolor (facultative hemiparasite), Striga hermonthica (obligate hemiparasite), and Phelipanche aegyptiaca (Orobanche [12]; holoparasite). Here we present the first set of large-scale genomic resources for parasitic plant comparative biology. Transcriptomes of above-ground tissues reveal that, in addition to the predictable loss of photosynthesis-related gene expression in P. aegyptiaca, the nonphotosynthetic parasite retains an intact, expressed, and selectively constrained chlorophyll synthesis pathway.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84155166996&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84155166996&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.cub.2011.11.011
DO - 10.1016/j.cub.2011.11.011
M3 - Article
C2 - 22169535
AN - SCOPUS:84155166996
SN - 0960-9822
VL - 21
SP - 2098
EP - 2104
JO - Current Biology
JF - Current Biology
IS - 24
ER -