Transferencia horizontal de genes entre plantas

De Mendoza CONICET

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= Horizontal Gene Transfer Among Plants =
= Horizontal Gene Transfer Among Plants =

Revisión de 13:39 3 feb 2012

Contenido

Horizontal Gene Transfer Among Plants

Introduction

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT), the exchange of genetic material between more or less distantly related, “non-mating” organisms, is widespread in prokaryotes and, to a lesser extent, unicellular eukaryotes. Over the past few years, however, HGT involving multicellular eukaryotes has been increasingly reported. Most well-documented examples of HGT in multicellular eukaryotes come from plant mitochondrial genomes. All but one of the 23 recently discovered cases of plant mitochondrial HGT involve transfer from one flowering plant (angiosperm) to another, often between distantly related angiosperms (e.g., monocots and dicots). Although a number of plant mitochondrial HGT have already been identified based on a modest sampling, no evidence of HGT has been found in land plant chloroplast genomes despite far greater sampling, and only a few cases of nuclear HGT have been described among plants. Therefore, plant mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is exceptionally prone to HGT, yet is still relatively poorly studied.

Plant mitochondria genomes are exceptional for several reasons. They are extraordinarily large (200-2400 kb) with large intergenic spacers, accounting for 78-98% of the genome that remain mostly uncharacterized. The presence of repeated sequences facilitate frequent rearrangements and structural changes, which may allow for increased tolerance to acquisition of foreign DNA. HGT in plant mitochondria often results in the presence of two intact copies of a particular mitochondrial gene, one native and one foreign copy. Chimeric genes formed by recombination of native and foreign copies of a mitochondrial gene have also been described. Little is known about the expression and functional implications of these horizontally transferred genes. The most frequently documented case of HGT in eukaryotes involves an intron present in the mitochondrial cox1 of flowering plants. This group I intron was originally transferred to angiosperms from a fungal donor and subsequently spread among many diverse angiosperms via hundreds if not thousands of plant-to-plant transfer events. Group I introns often encode site-specific DNA endonucleases and which facilitate intron propagation. The remarkably high frequency of horizontal transfer of the cox1 intron in plants, and the presence of an intact homing endonuclease-like reading frame in almost all plant cox1 introns, predict that the plant cox1 intron encodes an active homing endonuclease, but there is no direct, genetic or biochemical evidence to support this inference.

Goals:

  • Determine whether the cox1 intron encode a functional endonuclease and characterize its homing ability.
  • Investigate the mitochondrial gene content in stable cybrid lines from Solanaceae species, including coexistence of gene copies from both parental types and presence of chimeric genes formed by genome/gene rearrangements or recombination.
  • Understand the frequency of horizontal gene transfer between parasitic and host plants.
  • Examine expression levels and RNA editing efficiencies of those genes that were horizontally acquired.


Funding:

  • R03 TW008353-01 “Genomic studies of chimeric mitochondria in cybrids from Solanaceae”. Subsidio FIRCA-BB (Fogarty International Research Collaboration – Basic Biomedical) del NIH en beneficio de Dra. Sánchez Puerta, en colaboración con Dr. Jeffrey Palmer (Indiana University). 2009-2012. Monto total U$S 150.000. Media:ProjectSummary.pdf
  • PICT-2008-193. Analysis of horizontal gene transfer in recombinant mitochondria of somatic hybrids from Solanaceae. Directora: Sánchez Puerta, M. V. 2010-2012. Monto total $80,000.
  • FW/09/07. Proyecto bilateral en el marco del Programa de Cooperación Científico-Tecnológica entre MINCyT (Argentina)-FWO (Bélgica). “Estudio sobre mitocondrias recombinantes en híbridos somáticos de Solanaceas”. 2010-2011. Directora: Sánchez Puerta, M. V

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