Genome Sequencing of the Endangered Kingdonia uniflora (Circaeasteraceae, Ranunculales) Reveals Potential Mechanisms of Evolutionary Specialization
Yanxia Sun,
Tao Deng,
Aidi Zhang,
Michael J. Moore,
Jacob B. Landis,
Nan Lin,
Huajie Zhang,
Xu Zhang,
Jinling Huang,
Xiujun Zhang,
Hang Sun,
Hengchang Wang
Affiliations
Yanxia Sun
CAS Key Laboratory of Plant Germplasm Enhancement and Specialty Agriculture, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei, China; Center of Conservation Biology, Core Botanical Gardens, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei, China
Tao Deng
Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, Yunnan, China
Aidi Zhang
CAS Key Laboratory of Plant Germplasm Enhancement and Specialty Agriculture, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei, China; Center of Economic Botany, Core Botanical Gardens, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei, China
Michael J. Moore
Department of Biology, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, USA
Jacob B. Landis
Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, University of California Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA; School of Integrative Plant Science, Section of Plant Biology and the L.H. Bailey Hortorium, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
Nan Lin
CAS Key Laboratory of Plant Germplasm Enhancement and Specialty Agriculture, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei, China; Center of Conservation Biology, Core Botanical Gardens, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei, China
Huajie Zhang
CAS Key Laboratory of Plant Germplasm Enhancement and Specialty Agriculture, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei, China; Center of Conservation Biology, Core Botanical Gardens, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei, China
Xu Zhang
CAS Key Laboratory of Plant Germplasm Enhancement and Specialty Agriculture, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei, China; Center of Conservation Biology, Core Botanical Gardens, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei, China
Jinling Huang
Department of Biology, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA
Xiujun Zhang
CAS Key Laboratory of Plant Germplasm Enhancement and Specialty Agriculture, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei, China; Center of Economic Botany, Core Botanical Gardens, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei, China; Corresponding author
Hang Sun
Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, Yunnan, China; Corresponding author
Hengchang Wang
CAS Key Laboratory of Plant Germplasm Enhancement and Specialty Agriculture, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei, China; Center of Conservation Biology, Core Botanical Gardens, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei, China; Corresponding author
Summary: Kingdonia uniflora, an alpine herb, has an extremely narrow distribution and represents a model for studying evolutionary mechanisms of species that have adapted to undisturbed environments for evolutionarily long periods of time. We assembled a 1,004.7-Mb draft genome (encoding 43,301 genes) of K. uniflora and found significant overrepresentation in gene families associated with DNA repair, underrepresentation in gene families associated with stress response, and loss of most plastid ndh genes. During the evolutionary process, the overrepresentation of gene families involved in DNA repair could help asexual K. uniflora reduce the accumulation of deleterious mutations, while reducing genetic diversity, which is important in responding to environment fluctuations. The underrepresentation of gene families related to stress response and functional loss of ndh genes could be due to lack or loss of ability to respond to environmental changes caused by long-term adaptation to a relatively stable ecological environment.
